By Ralph Mroz
Hopefully you carry a firearm off duty. You can now legally do so nationwide, thanks to President Bush signing the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act a couple years ago. Yes, the politicians — including, unfortunately, some of the police brass — in a few cites such as New York and Chicago may still give you a hassle for so doing, but think about it: why should anyone know that you are carrying a concealed handgun at all? The only good reason is that you had to challenge someone with it or use it, at which point the extra hassle is a small thing, in context. But just because you carry a gun off duty doesn’t mean that you can use it effectively, should you need to.
To paraphrase the late Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Cooper: “Owning a guitar doesn’t make someone a musician.”
“What do you mean,” I can hear some of you saying, “I’m on the department SWAT team, I shoot every week, I’m a tactical stud!”
I’m sure you are. And if you ever have to — off duty — draw your service pistol from your duty holster to defend yourself, then my bets are on you. But if you have to draw a less used, less practiced gun from somewhere that you don’t carry a pistol during most of your armed hours, then…well, things could get a little more exciting that any of us would want. Because if—under extreme stress—you have to draw on off duty gun from a place that you don’t have thousands of draw stroke repetitions from, then I can probably safely give you even odds of the draw being flubbed to a significant degree.
This lesson was driven home to me just this last Summer. I was filming a DVD series on armed self defense and as part of the section on different carry methods, I was demonstrating a full-speed draw from each one. Well, it took me several takes to demonstrate a good draw from a couple of these carry methods (such as from the shoulder holster) because I simply never use them. Not because there’s anything wrong with, for example a shoulder holster, but because I just don’t happen to use one. I could draw just fine from them at 3/4 speed and even at 7/8 speed, but when I had to go full throttle for the camera, I flubbed it.
Lesson learned: don’t assume that you can carry your gun somewhere from which you have little practice drawing it — including the use of your ordinary concealing garments — and get to the gun in a hurry. Practice counts. In fact, it’s necessary!
This lesson applies to something as simple as slipping a small gun into your pocket — either a pants pocket or a coat pocket. If you haven’t practiced drawing from there (full speed, and preferably also under some stress) then it’s virtually a sure thing that you won’t have a reliable draw when you need it. I was reminded of this last Summer when performing back-up gun transitions for the camera. I simply hadn’t practiced getting to my back up gun in a hurry in some of the places I carry a back up, or even sometimes my primary gun while off duty.
Yes, we all probably shoot our back up and off-duty guns at the range. But we usually do it wrong. During a session, we probably train with our primary gun the majority of the time, and then if we think of, it we put the primary gun down, pick up and load the smaller gun, and shoot that. With back ups, what we should do is to run our primary gun dry or to a malfunction (which we’ll probably have to induce or simulate), and at that point practice finding cover or moving while drawing our back up and continuing to fire with it. Similarly with off-duty guns: practice drawing and shooting them with actual concealment clothing and under stress. You will be surprised just how fumble-prone these seemingly simple little exercises can be. Yes, anyone can draw a gun from anywhere easily without stress. But even under as little stress as the clock adds, it ain’t so easy if we don’t practice it often! Don’t ‘diss it until you’ve tried it.
Of course, most of us (me included) don’t practice as much as we should with our BUGs or off duty guns, just in terms of pure shooting. These guns are invariably smaller and/or lighter than our duty gun (otherwise we’d just be carrying our duty pistol) and are thus more difficult to shoot. Therefore they need at least as much trigger time to remain proficent. Many of us probably carry a snub-nose revolver as our small gun, and they are good choices. But they are the devil to shoot well. As much inherent mechanical accuracy as they have, their human accuracy is held in check by their light weight, short sight radius, and usually useless stock sights. The good news is that we’ll probably need them only at very short distances, at which hitting our assailant shouldn’t be a problem, but…well, you know.
A really neat resource that I’ve come across to help in this regard is Claude Werner’s Dry Fire Practice for the Snub Nose Revolver. Claude is a retired Army Captain, a master-class shooter, and an instructor at the Rogers Shooting School. In Claude’s words: Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to practice. They go to the range, waste ammunition, and only practice at the range. Really good shooters practice often, both at the range and at home, and they use their practice sessions effectively. These CDs can make you a much better shooter in a short period of time by guiding you through the process of practicing successfully. And because much of your practice is done without ammunition it is quite inexpensive.
As we all know, you have to train like you’ll fight. That applies to off duty guns, too!