PAUL HARRELL ON POINT SHOOTING

A surprisingly balanced presentation. Having at one time experienced brief training-by the Deputy Chief of a major city PD- in the concept at close quarters, I still have my quibbles. The justifications for “hip shooting” were that if you brought your gun up to a normal shooting position, someone in a crowd could bump your arm, resulting in a miss/innocent victim. The other was assurance that “a hit anywhere between wind and water” would instantly solve your problem.

I was born at night, but it wasn’t the previous night. If there are people about, there’s no magic shooting lane and shot placement is THE most important factor in threat resolution. (retention shooting at contact distances excepted) Getting hits-somewhere-on target at about 5-7 yards didn’t turn out to be much of an issue. However, there wasn’t a threat/stress, time didn’t mater much-in short it didn’t much resemble an actual confrontation.

Skilled “instinctive” shooting at eye level involves a learned visual alignment of the gun and the target. It’s sighted fire using the gun or some part of it to create a sight picture. Lucky Gunner did a video showing that there was no significant time difference between using the sights and “instinctive” fire. Group size and location were significantly better with the factory sights.

The shooting exploits of Jelly Brice, both on targets and criminals, influenced FBI and police handgun training for decades. Unfortunately, the vast majority of us have neither his skill level nor practice time. Our police academy still taught below eye level point shooting at 3 yards, in the mid 1980s.

There is no such thing as “instinctive shooting” or instinctively riding a bicycle or instinctively using a fork. Man is a tool bearing creature and is born knowing how to nurse at his mother’s breast, sleep, pee and poop. Everything else must be learned. Pointing one’s hand may be a natural movement but gripping and pulling a trigger in a way to produce the desired result is learned.