3 Drills for Concealed Carry

[Paladin]

Some solid low round count drills for Concealed Carry:



Well executed fundamentals win. I don't use high ready, but some people do.

[JustSomeOldGuy]

Anyone familiar with his book? Comments on same?

I also prefer to avoid high ready, on two counts
1) Cooper Rule 4. If any stackup of error/misfortune causes an ND at high ready, I won't have a clue where that round will backstop.
2) As a novice self defense class student decades ago, the instructor gave me a blue gun, stood about ten feet away from me, told me to assume high ready and then tell him what he had in his hands. He jinked in concert with me trying to see around my hands and gun. I had to tell him I couldn't really SEE his hands. When he told me to target his chest, and put his own hands at low ready, once again my hands and gun were blocking my view of his hands.....

[LTUME1978]

The version of high ready we are taught at CSAT (Paul Howe) has the hands lower and in a position where we can fully perform target descression. Paul goes through the options and explains why this is his preferred position. I listen to someone that spent 10 years in Delta and was involved in all of the action that he saw.

[carlson1]

Great video. I am all for the sul position. I am sure not for the high ready position.

[Rafe]

A few random, long, and not-very-informed thoughts. But hey...I really like these discussions and getting different viewpoints.

I really like the notion of shooting cold from concealment with different drills...call it the crossfit of firearm defensive training. Maybe even have a bunch of drills on index cards (one that only require a simple target setup) and just select one at random when you fire your first rounds of the day.

But I'm not sold on two of the three ready positions as shown, and I think there's another important one that's missing...though you can't practice it live-fire at most ranges; you'd need your own land or do dryfire or airsoft.

After I started getting trained up at least a little bit about 20 years ago, I've never used a low-ready as shown, with the arms fully extended and down at about a 45° angle unless an instructor demanded it (which has happened). Three problems with that position.

One: you're exposed to a close quarters block or trap that can take your gun out of the fight. I've seen a lot of instructors teach going to this low ready following the immediate action, and then doing a scan for other threats. Well, if there is another threat who happens to be standing from your 4:00 to your 10:00, you're providing a good opportunity for him before you even scan around to see if he's there. No bueno.

Two: Newton's 3rd law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. You may think you can get the gun up to a center mass target super fast, but in reality it's like swinging a wrecking ball: if you swing a crane with a wrecking ball attached on a chain hard in one direction, the ball is gonna lag behind the crane, and when you stop the crane the ball keeps on swinging in that direction. A lot of competition shooters teach this about target transition. If you suddenly jerk your fully extended hands with around 30 ounces of gun at the end of them, the point of aim ain't gonna stop where you think it's gonna stop. It's going to overtravel, and then you have to adjust and continue to make a few microadjustments for a couple of milliseconds to get your sight picture. In essence, this is the whole "slow is smooth; smooth is fast" business. It's like opening a typical 16 ounce disposable water bottle and wanting get the water out quickly. If you just turn it upside down it's going to glug and splash everywhere. But if you control the pour to be as fast as possible without any glugging, the water actually empties faster and with no splashing.

Three: I've always been taught to remember learning theory about the four stages of competence:

1. Unconscious incompetence
2. Conscious incompetence
3. Conscious competence
4. Unconscious competence

It takes many thousands of repetitions of perfect practice--and continuous use so that the skill doesn't diminish--to get to stage four with a complex physical skill. I've never seen anyone teach a handgun drawstroke that came out of the holster, extended the arms out at a 45° downward direction, and then try to jerk the gun up to get a sight picture.

Maxim two is that individual segments of movement in a skill that's reached unconscious competence are more readily and consistently repeated than a different movement that's at a lower level of competence. If we work hours on developing a drawstroke that ticks all the boxes for least extraneous motion, the ability to deliver CQB accurate rounds through most of the firearm's presentation, and offers least exposure to third-party fouling (meaning good retention characteristics), then why on earth would we opt to adopt any "ready" position that looked nothing like and followed none of the patterns of that drawstroke?

Neither the high ready nor low ready in the video are segments of anyone's drawstroke...or at least shouldn't be. There's only one situation where I see the need for a distinction or for having a "high ready" at all. In team tactics, if you're going high and another team member(s) is going low, you don't want your muzzle pointed downward when he's transitioning in front of you. If you're in a role where that's a realistic possibility--even working with your spouse for home defense--then, yeah, you absolutely train for it. Otherwise, setting yourself up to "Charlie's Angel" your presentation is just about as bad biomechanically as jerking up from a fully extended low ready.

I have a CQB compressed ready: gun indexed high and firm on the outer pec, barrel angle about 45° downward, elbow high and tight in the back, offhand flat against the chest at about the same height as the gunhand. This represents the first few inches of firearm travel in my drawstroke, and it's what you need at a bad-breath, hand-to-hand assault distance. First rounds at a couple of feet away can be delivered accurately toward the pelvis or abdomen and (if not in a multi-story building) misses or overpenetrations would go into the ground about 8 feet in front of you. Very difficult for an attacker to foul your ability to fire or to attempt to take your gun away.

Next stage of the drawstroke has the gun press forward, high nearer the shoulder level than the solar plexus level (you want to keep the sights as close to eyelevel as realistic), both elbows staying close to the body, and the hands joining in a solid two-hand grip about a foot in front of and a little toward the gunhand side of the chest. The muzzle is a little higher than at CQB compressed ready, closer to 30°. This is a compressed ready, and perfectly suitable for scanning immediately after action. Rounds can still be delivered accurately at short distances; gun is still tightly controlled close to the body and not easy to foul or intercept; complete view of anyone in front of you from toe to top. The sights would be only a handful of inches below eyelevel at this point, so they would travel very little vertically as you press out fully (no jerking up or down), allowing the front sight or optic to come into play visually for probably the last 50% of the press-out.

Three different positions from which rounds can be delivered at a spectrum of good accuracy based on target distance, and the transition from one position to the other is not either/or: they're all continuous component segments of the same drawstroke. Downside is that you can't effectively maintain a compressed ready or CQB compressed ready for extended periods. But to me any true "ready" position is at a solid orange in Cooper's Color Code: potential threat identified; ready to act.

The one that's not part of the drawstroke that I like, and I agree with Carl here, is the Sul position. I've been using it for a lotta years since I first got it from Gabe Suarez and it's always made a lot of sense to me. I think Paul Howe teaches it, as well.

If memory serves, it got its name from action in the slums (favela) down in Rio and Sao Paulo where people can be as packed-in as sardines in a can. Not a real Condition Orange position, but it allows a full, turning, 360° sweep to assess the environment and situation, it keeps the firearm almost flush with the front of the body (good for both retention and not bumping it into stuff in tight quarters), and it makes it safer negotiating around people and in buildings. I've had folks ask about multi-story structures and say that it isn't safer for people on the floor below, and though you could say the same about a high ready if there are floors above, I generally counter by asking them if they think they'd ever be likely to reflexively pull a trigger with both thumbs properly indexed and the gunhand wrist articulated at almost 90°.

You start in Sul, and you're a simple wrist-straighten and about 8 or 10 inches of forward movement away from a compressed ready. I think practicing from compressed ready to Sul and back again makes for a good addition to the pattern training. Also, you can maintain Sul for an extended amount of time without tiring, and compared to the arms-extended low ready it's both quicker to get an accurate shot off (in compressed ready) from there than extended low ready, and it looks a lot less intimidating to any observers, cameras or witnesses. With the gun in Sul it doesn't look like you're itching to get off a round. Conversely, that extended low ready can certainly look that way, especially if you're having an adrenaline dump and your arms are shaking and wobbling the point-of-aim all over the place. With Sul, you're indexed tight to your body and if your hands are shaking it likely won't be noticeable.

[Mike S]

with pretty much everything Rafe said above, especially the sentiment of testing our abilities 'cold'.

I'm also not a fan of either the low ready or high ready as depicted in the video, with inertia leading to over travel & weapon retention being the primary reasons (although if someone is close enough to foul up your presentation, I'd encourage you to not have the gun out in front of you anyway). In addition, for the low ready I have the same issue that JustSomeOldGuy cited above regarding occlusion of the lower half of the visual field, however there's different definitions of what 'low ready' & 'high ready' means regarding a handgun. I've read studies by the Force Science Institute & other research organizations that define 'high ready' as having the handgun at full extension, but the gun lowered just below the line of sight, & 'low ready' defined as lowered at about a 45* angle. Using this definition, a Calibre Press study found about a 50% 'mistake of fact' error rate with the high ready (study participants using a shoot/no-shoot simulator shot a subject holding a cell phone); study participants using the low ready only had a 30% mistake of fact error rate. The low ready position was only about 11/100 seconds slower. The researchers pontificated that having just a fraction of a second more time to process the stimuli may have been enough to lower the errors by 20% (although fewer no-shoot targets shot, that 30% is still a bit disturbing to me).

I'm also not a fan of waiving the gun around everywhere my eyes go during the scan. Once I PID a threat, it's a matter of orienting my body & presentation of the gun so the sights instinctively go to where my visual acuity is locked on to. As shown in this video, it seemed like a range-ism vs a dynamic technique. After dealing with the initial threat, I prefer Sul for a 360* scan (mostly visual, but turning body as needed to complete the scan). The primary purpose of the 'scan', as I teach it, is to break the tunnel vision off of the work you just did so you don't get fixated, then answer the questions:

1. Are there more threats that need an immediate response? Or, potential threats to be aware of?
2. Where are my loved ones, & what is their status? Are there innocent third parties that need assistance?
3. Where is a better position to be, better than where I am right now, AND how am I going to get there? (Ie, not masking other people's fields of fire; looking for trip hazards before I sprint to better cover; etc).

((Note: these questions aren't always sequential; if there's another threat that needs to be maneuvered on, identify where you're going to go, & how you're going to get there to maximize cover/ concealment. "Remove the source of injury before tending to the injured")).

Going back to ready positions, I would think it prudent to differentiate between "training" vs "practical application".

In training, I typically start students with Position 3 of the 4-position draw stroke (some call this the High Compressed Ready, and while I'll use these terms interchangeably, saying "Position 3" is less syllables...). I'd describe Position 3 as both hands gripping the gun; gun close to the body somewhere around high sternum level with the elbows close into the side (anatomy & mobility of joints dependent); with muzzle oriented towards the target & barrel level/parallel to the ground. The general concept is to have the gun in the midpoint of the draw cycle, with the sights below the visual line of sight but ready to push the front sight into whatever point on the threat's anatomy your eyes are locked onto, and hone the presentation from Position 3 out to Position 4 (full extension), with the understanding that generally speaking you don't push to Position 4 until you are certain of justification & committed to taking the shot. After the student is smooth with 3 to 4, & 4 back to 3, we'll progress to starting from the holster (Position 1), & working thru the entire draw stroke.

Bringing it back to practical application, Position 3 can be modified with varying angles of muzzle orientation to prevent muzzling anything not needing to be muzzled.
For example, in the +/- 1 second it takes to draw the gun the threat makes better life choices & you deem deadly force is no longer 'immediatly' necessary, but you aren't convinced that immediacy won't return so you keep the gun in your hand. It's also useful while running with the gun in hand or pie'ing around corners/ threshold evaluations. I'm thinking what Rafe is describing as his CQB Compressed Ready is what I'm calling a variation of Position 3.

For turning 180* or maneuvering around other people, Sul is really good. Or, for retention when in a crowd, especially if the crowd is running away from a threat & you're trying to swim upstream against the crowd to reach the threat. ((Caveat: if the threat isn't really close, I'd recommend leaving the gun holstered vs trying to maintain control of your gun while moving in a crowd; there's so many things that could go wrong in that scenario...)).

I would add Temple Index to the list of ready positions, although I see it as limited to niche applications. ((Temple Index is a bit of a misnomer; I'd recommend having the gun further back than your temple to not block your peripheral vision. More like indexing the knuckles of your gun hand between your temple & ear.)) For an example use of Temple Index, if I had to engage an immediate threat on the front-passenger side window while I'm in the driver's seat, the Temple Index allows me a midpoint from holster to engage behind the passenger's head (controlling the passenger with my left/support hand so they don't get shot in the back of the head...). Another limited use of Temple Index is when opening doors with the support hand; at Sul the muzzle is pointed down so shouldn't muzzle the door hand, but if someone on the other side suddenly appears the rapid orientation of the handgun up to the threat often happens so quick that the door knob hand is still recoiling back to the body (or the person kinda forgets to pull their support hand off the doorknob...) getting muzzled along the way. Again, very limited utility in my opinion, but enough practical application for training on it.

Retention Position is another niche position. I don't teach it as part of the normal draw stroke, but as soon as there's sufficient distance from the threat the gun hand / support hand meet up near the sternum in Position 3, & the draw stroke is presented out if additional shots on target are still needed to stop the threat. ((By 'not as part of the normal draw stroke', I mean not like depicted in Mike Panone's book. That's may be how Mike learned it back in the day, but it's not what we teach now)).

[srothstein]

I think there may be a mistake in theory on ready positions and the draw stroke. IMO, I don't go to a ready position when i draw, I go to a shooting position. I draw because I have already determined there is an immediate threat and I have decided I need to take action against that threat. If I am getting my weapon out of my holster for some other reason, such as checking for a possible threat, I do not consider it a draw stroke, just a getting ready and I do it differently than when I draw. In that case, the ready position is not part of the draw stroke, but is a separate get ready movement.

Of the positions mentioned in the video, I generally prefer a low ready position, BUT I also do it at a much lower angle than the video shows. Keeping the weapon at the position shown (about 30 degrees down from horizontal) has all of the potential problems mentioned, especially retention and vision. I tend to use an almost vertical down position, say about 75 degrees from horizontal. This gives me better control of the weapon and better visibility, even though it slows my ultimate presentation a little. But it helps me with a flash sight picture as I bring the pistol up, allowing my first shot as I see the sights even before the pistol stops moving.

But there are a couple other positions that might also work and should be considered. Way back in the 80s, SAPD taught me a position they called the Third Eye position. As I draw to start looking for the threat (especially searching a house or area), draw the pistol and use a two handed grip right in the center of your stomach. This lets you keep the pistol braced tightly in your gut, with your arms against your sides. The barrel will naturally point in whatever direction you are facing and if you turn to look at something, turn your body instead of just your head. The pistol is naturally facing whatever threat you are looking at. You also do not need to move the pistol if you need to fire it. Yes, we were using revolvers when we were taught this, but it only requires a slight modification of the position (where your arms are braced a little further in than your sides) to use a pistol and allow room for the slide to work.

The problem with all of these positions is that you need them ONLY if you are LOOKING for a threat. As a general rule, I do not advise people to go looking for trouble, even in their own home. Take a good strong defensive position and wait for the trouble to come to you. It will get there too quickly in most cases. As a cop, I used to have to go looking for trouble. I needed these different ready and search positions. As a homeowner/citizen you have the option of not searching and just defending yourself. That requires different tactics and you should consider what you will do in each possible case. BTW, you are not wrong if you decide to look for the burglar in your house or the noise you heard outside. It is a very natural and commendable instinct to defend your home territory. I am just saying it is not always the best choice for survival.

The other position I was taught and do strongly recommend you consider and practice is a different draw stroke than normal. Most police shootouts used to occur at 8-10 feet. This distance allows for a draw, presentation, and fire that we all have practiced and used. I am not sure how often this other technique is needed, but it seems common enough to justify this for me. As a police officer, we also knew that a lot of attacks occurred from the interview position. This is a distance of 1 to 3 feet when you are talking to the other person. For an average citizen, the problem is what happens when the bad guy starts by stepping in front of you and into your personal space - 1 to 3 feet. In this case, I draw but take the pistol back to even with my hip, turned 90 degrees to be parallel to the ground, and fire from that position. I also do it as I am taking a step back to try to open some distance and it can include using the weak hand to push the attacker away.

Think about what you will do when the attacker is that close to you that you cannot do your normal draw and presentation. Some attacks are surprises that you did not expect and the person gets closer than you think they will.

[Bolton Strid]

The other position I was taught and do strongly recommend you consider and practice is a different draw stroke than normal. Most police shootouts used to occur at 8-10 feet. This distance allows for a draw, presentation, and fire that we all have practiced and used. I am not sure how often this other technique is needed, but it seems common enough to justify this for me. As a police officer, we also knew that a lot of attacks occurred from the interview position. This is a distance of 1 to 3 feet when you are talking to the other person. For an average citizen, the problem is what happens when the bad guy starts by stepping in front of you and into your personal space - 1 to 3 feet. In this case, I draw but take the pistol back to even with my hip, turned 90 degrees to be parallel to the ground, and fire from that position. I also do it as I am taking a step back to try to open some distance and it can include using the weak hand to push the attacker away.

Think about what you will do when the attacker is that close to you that you cannot do your normal draw and presentation. Some attacks are surprises that you did not expect and the person gets closer than you think they will.

Thank you for that post, you said it well. That's a very apt description of what happens in the real world right there. There is so much crap so-called training out there that isn't really helpful, such as the above video up the thread. People aren't going to jump or carjack you from across a parking lot for crying out loud. They're going to be right there, on top of you. They've already made up their mind on what they're going to do, that's why they're there, in your space. Sadly I don't see a lot of intent on training for that particular threat - just a lot of banging away at targets situated yards out. That's not a full spectrum training plan. Familiarity with close range fighting has to be developed - not worrying about any front sight picture, stance or any of that stuff. Being familiar with drawing and immediately firing by muzzle point. The confrontation experiences typical for a police officer versus that of a regular citizen aren't really comparable due to obvious differences that don't need enumerating here, consequently a citizen needs some altered training technique mindset that's more applicable to what would realistically be encountered.