Reprinted by permission from Women & Guns.

By:  Lyn Bates, Contributing Editor

The National Tactical Test:  LEARNING TO STAY ALIVE!

This is the place to test yourself. No multiple choice. No true/false. No essay questions. Just walk down the alley toward the parking lot where your car is, and interact naturally with three peculiar guys you encounter there.
 
 

It's pass/fail. If you get through the alley in just a few minutes, you pass. If you get shot, well....

The closest man is slovenly. Homeless? Drunk? Harmless? Threatening?

He staggers toward you, waving his hands and complaining that you, bitch, don't belong on his turf, so what the f--are you doing here?

The revolver carefully concealed under your jacket is a comforting presence, but it raises test questions of its own. Should you have your hand on the grip of the gun while you are talking to him, or is that overreacting? If you do grip it, will the gun show prematurely, making a mockery of the term "concealed" carry and perhaps unnecessarily escalating the situation? Does the gun enable you to deal more easily with this potential threat, or does it make the interaction more awkward? Should you tell him forcefully to leave you alone, or should you withdraw, or should you take cover? How much attention should you focus on him, when two other guys are also in your field of vision?

You calmly tell the drunk to stay back, that the troubles with his girlfriend have nothing to do with you, but you will leave him alone. Before you can withdraw from the alley, he seems to be collapsing on the ground -or is he reaching for something there?

Gun! He has a gun and is starting to bring it toward you! Do you remember to dive for cover as you draw and shoot?

Did you hit him? Yes! Did he hit you? Nope! He's on the ground, apparently dead. Are you certain he's not faking? Have your troubles been reduced by one, or multiplied? Does your training take over? What about the other two men?

"Don't move!" you shout, as you quickly turn your attention, and your gun, to the pair, who may or may not be friends of the fallen wouldbe murderer. "Come out," you yell to the one who is now hiding, "Get your hands up! Let me see your hands."

"Don't touch that weapon!" you add, though you don't see any other weapon around.

You try to summon up the right words and right tone of voice to get the second man to lie down on the ground. He is uncooperative. Why? Is he deaf? Drunk? Frightened by being in close proximity to a shooting? Trying to go for his own weapon?

As you try to sort that out, you feel increasingly frustrated that he will not obey your commands. You watch him like a hawk, looking for any dangerous movement.

While you are watching and commanding, the third man, sitting at the far end of the alley, subtly moves the newspaper on his lap just enough to expose his gun. You don't see it, but you feel the two shots and they strike your arm and leg....

"You made some good decisions" the judge tells you after it is all over, and one of the bad guys gives you a thumbsup. That's the good news. The bad news is that you didn't keep fighting after being shot, and didn't take full advantage of the cover available in the alley. But you are lucky, some people are shot as soon as they get into the alley, virtually without warning.

Score? Though the judges will assign one, based on your time, penalties for tactical errors, and bonuses for good tactics, the score is truly irrelevant. You are your own harshest critic, as you replay the scenario again and again in your mind, thinking of what you could have done better. As you clean your "wounds" by wiping away the paint that marks you as having been shot, you think how glad you are that you were hit with Simunitions pink paint pellets, not real bullets. The pellets, going at 400 fps, pack quite a wallop, and raise welts and bruises.

Even afterward, the questions don't stop. Should you have tried to make the last two guys prone out, our should you have told them to leave the area? Did you say the right things? Do the right things? Watch the right places?

That was just one stage of the 10 stage National Tactical Test. It has been called the National Tactical Invitational match for the last five years, but there's a move afoot to give it a name more in keeping with what it does. What it does, is test you.

The NTI is evolving away from a competition into an instructional weekend that combines the tactical scenarios with seminars and hands-on training. Even the scorecards are evolving-they are now called Tactical Information Forms. The judge's evaluation is necessarily subjective. It is a learning experience par excellence.

Not Just For Cops

One of the things I love about the NTI is that its tests are completely relevant to ordinary civilians, not just young, athletic, male police officers.

I've participated in so many simulated training exercises where the premise is that you are a police officer on patrol or called to a scene. Scenarios that require you to call for backup and take the subject into custody just aren't realistic or relevant for ordinary life and ordinary people.

There is no particular advantage, here, to being highly athletic. Perhaps I should restate that: there is no particular disadvantage if you have a bad knee, a minor back problem, etc. It involves everyday activities like walking up stairs (you don't even have to run); no climbing ropes, swinging over precipices, leaping chasms, or rapidly going prone, at least, this year.

Age is certainly no barrier-the participants ranged from young teenagers to over 80. That's right, the youngest shooter was 13 year old Adam Gochenour, and the oldest was octogenarian Mason Williams, a gunwriter of renown who said he has been looking for this experience for half a century.

Who Do You Meet?

So, who else do you meet at the NTI? Law enforcement folk from corrections to cops to the FBI. Instructors. Writers. Doctors. Lawyers. Ordinary folk. It is an education worth far, far more than the registration fee.

Women&Guns was well represented by Gila May-Hayes, Roger Lanny, and me. Other women were, sadly, scarce. Vicki Farnam, who teaches police and civilians at Defense Training International with her husband, John Farnam, was there, as was Shirley Steffen, who works for Combat Handguns magazine and travels around the country to participate in paintball matches. This was Shirley's first NTI; she used a .45ACP 1911, and had a blast!

Also attending was 18-year-old Cathy Ayoob, a college sophomore majoring in communications at Syracuse University (and yes, the elder daughter of gunwriter and instructor Massad Ayoob). This was Cathy's first NTI, and not only did she love it, but she was High Woman to boot! Displaying the delightful combination of poise and enthusiasm that has been part of her personality for as long as I've known her, she survived most of the stages, while dispatching large numbers of hostile targets to the netherworld.

Dr. Leslie Andes, an anesthesiologist from Marin County, California, decided this was the right place to test herself. Taking seriously the injunction to equip oneself realistically, she brought only one gun (a ParaOrdnance P12, .45 ACP, 13 round capacity), no backup, and in all 10 stages never wished for a second gun.

Leslie has a firearms license, but not a concealed carry permit, because her police chief refuses to issue them. "I used to work at Berkeley," she says, "Sometimes I'd go in and do a case until 3 o'clock in the morning. Then I'd come out, the parking garage is across the street, and my car is on the third level where I had to park it when I came in that morning, and I had to walk up there all by myself. The police chief just said, 'I've never given one out, and I don't intend to start now.

As far as I was able to determine, every single one of these women did very, very well. There's no disadvantage to being a woman in this match!

Two other women were originally expected to participate, but one opted for a vacation in Hawaii (I just can't fathom her decision process) and the other recently learned that she is pregnant and wisely decided not to shoot.

The rest of the 120 shooters included many of the top names in defensive shooting, including: Massad Ayoob, John Farnam (who won the prestigious Tactical Advocates Award this year), Peter Dayton, Marty and Gila Hays, and Greg Hamilton, to name a few, as well as a spectrum of folk from as far away as Argentina.

This is a mental match, not an equipment match. Unless you are a law enforcement officer in uniform, all guns must be concealed. Backup guns are encouraged, but only a modest (read: realistic) amount of extra ammo can be carried.

The equipment you start the day with is the equipment you must carry with you all day, on every stage. You mark on your equipment card everything you are wearing or carrying, and at each stage an official checks to see that you have not added or removed anything. This forces you to think carefully about what is really essential and what isn't, and eliminates the tendency of some people to "dress for the party" by loading up with gear for certain stages and stripping down to the lightest minimum for others.

Once again, I carried two Browning HiPowers, loaded with CorBon 115grain 9mm ammo kindly supplied by Peter Pi of CorBon. It takes the metal targets down promptly, which wimpy 9mm rounds will sometimes not do.

I went fairly light this year, carrying (in addition to guns and ammo) only a SureFire 6P flashlight and a pair of thin leather golf gloves for the Simunitions stages. Vicki Farnam, "loveless, received a bloody wound when a paint pellet hit her in the middle finger of her left hand, exactly the part of the hand chat is most exposed when a righthanded person fires using a twohanded grip, and the place to which the opponent's fire is naturally drawn by the effects of tunnel vision. Though I was lucky enough not to need them this year, gloves will remain a permanent part of my NTI gear!

My vest, though bought at a jeans store, is perfect for the NTI. It is full of pockets, ranging from two deep zippered ones to big semicircular open pockets in front that make it easy to toss in and later retrieve a partially depleted magazine, shotgun shells, or a flashlight.

The right equipment is essential. For me, this included a marvelous, inexpensive device called a ThermoTie, which was like wearing a personal airconditioner in the hot Arizona sun. It is a colorful cotton neckerchief filled with beads of some wondrous substance that absorb many, many times their own weight in water. I soaked mine in cold water for 10 minutes at 7 a.m. and wore it around my neck all day. It was still cooling me at 7 p.m., and didn't completely dry out for several more days!

Roger's guns, Glock 21, .45 ACP and Glock 23, 40 S&W backup worked flawlessly. The CorBon 230 .45 bonded hollow point and the 1(35grain 40 S&W hollow point all fed without a single problem.

Popular calibers for this match were .45, .40 S&W, and 9mm.

The competitors weren't uniformly dressed. Jeans, Tshirts, and vests predominated, but there were plenty of shorts, a little cammo, and even two gentlemen who wisely wore their usual sport jacket and shirt, since they wanted to test their everyday method of concealed carry. Mark Moritz won "High Realist" for shooting the entire match with an eminently practical 2 Jframe revolver and two Bianchi speed strips.

The NTI was organized this year by Skip Gochenour of the American Tactical Shooting Association and his cadre of more than 40 incredibly hardworking volunteers. Skip's extensive background in law enforcement fueled the design of the scenarios. Richard Jee volunteered to host the match at Gunsite.

The three basic rules of the NTI are memorable, flexible, and important. No stupid gun handling. No whining or sniveling. No boorish behavior.

The range officers, judges, and ROs all wore white shirts and hats, marking them as "good guys" who should never be crossed with a muzzle. Many of them also wore pins with the universal "no" symbol on the word "sniveling," a constant reminder that complainers get thrown out of the match.

Talk the Talk

This is the place to come to talk equipment, to talk tactics, to talk experience and war stories. To hear people from different law enforcement agencies talk about their problems and exchange ideas on solving them. To talk to other people who are serious about shooting for survival and who want to know their own limitations and their equipment's limitations.

This is not the "Bang, bang! You're dead!" kind of smiling play that children and paintballers engage in. People who train themselves or others for real lifeanddeath situations on a daily basis take the NTI very seriously. "Dying" in an exercise here brings the emotional realization chat, if this had been a real emergency, the wrong person, the good guy, you, would have been taken to the morgue. Participants emerge sobered, and educated, by the experience, which of course is exactly what Skip Gochenour had in mind when he devised these diabolical scenarios.

10 Lessons of the NTI

1. Use your eyes. Look at your targets to determine who needs to be shot and who doesn't. Look at the front sight.

2. Take cover. If you can't take cover, step out of the line of fire.

3. If you are shot, keep fighting.

4. Vocalize. Even if the targets are paper and steel, yell commands at them.

5. Train carefully, because you will do what you have trained to do.

6. Don't relax your vigilance. It ain't over when you think it's over.

7. Tunnel vision happens. You can't prevent it, but you might train to minimize it.

8. No chicken walking!

9. Take full responsibility for what you do. Don't blame your equipment, the weather, the lighhug, or anyone else.

10. Expect to break each of the above nine rules at least once. don't be too hard on yourself- everyone else at the NTI will do the same.

If you want to experience as closely as possible what it is really like to be in a gunfight, this is the place. You don't have to be a super marksman, you don't have to be an athlete, you don't have to own fancy guns-gear-gadgets, you don't have to mortgage your house to buy enough ammo to practice. Mind and spirit are what's important here. All you need is some tactical training, awareness, a fighting spirit, and an ego that isn't too easily bruised.

With other matches, what I remember is the things I did right. The feeling of clearing a table of bowling pins with one-shot-one-pin. Winning the Mixed Doubles at Second Chance with Mitch Ota.

But with this match, the things that come to mind first are the mistakes, and the lessons that seem so obvious when you read them but can be devilishly difficult to perform under stress. Clearing a house while oblivious to the fact I was walking on gravel ("Don't be noisy"). Tunnel vision making me miss the door to a closet where targets lurked ("Don't fail to engage hostile targets"). Moving too fast through a house clearing ("Use cover"). Staying too close to the wall being used as cover ("Don't crowd. ").

Recalling these problems is not fun, but is essential to doing better. Now, I'm usually conscious of the noise I'm making when walking around, or the shadow of my gun or my body that might give away my position. Remembering what gets you "killed" in one scenario may save your life in another, or in real life.

The test is three-fold. Some stages stress individual skills, such as a fast draw. Some stages involve live fire scenarios (always at least one with a gun other than your own) that test your ability to look at your environment, assess it, and deal with it (how you approach windows, doorways, stairs, etc.), and the third is force-on-force, the Simunitions stages that test how you interact with live, unpredictable people who move and talk and sometimes try to kill you, but sometimes not.

The targets are as varied as the scenarios. All steel is hostile, though large steel silhouettes wear T-shirts, steel poppers may be partly obscured by paint or cloth, cardboard IPSC targets are clothed, new humanoid targets developed and patented by the NTI wear various clothes but fall only when you deliver "anatomically correct" hits, generally more than one, to the center of the body or head.

The NTI teaches you which aspects of tactical shooting are easy for you to follow, and which are challenging. For each individual this differs. For one person it is distinguishing the "good guys" from the "bad guys," often only differentiated by a small picture of a weapon or badge ("Don't shoot innocents") while for another it may be remembering to check behind them as they exit a room they have just cleared ("Don't relax vigilance"). A third may consistently have trouble remembering to pull the trigger more than once, or may creep too slowly through a scene ("Don't dawdle"). A fourth may forget to check out a dark closet with a flashlight ("Use a light if needed") and might let the muzzle of the gun precede her through a doorway ("Don't telegraph your position").

Pressure? There's plenty of it. If being shot at with stinging paint pellets by "bad guys" (who are, in real life, members of the Yavapi County SWAT team) isn't exciting enough, twice a pair of stages were structured so that you had barely 10 seconds after the first to ready yourself, physically and mentally, for the start of the next.

There's no security blanket in the form of large amounts of ammunition. If you have a high capacity primary gun, you are allowed to carry one spare mag; if you are toting a single stack you may have two extra mags. But no spare ammo for any backup gun. ("Ammo management!") Penalties are handed out if you perform a speed reload chat leaves a mag on the ground instead of a tactical reload chat keeps the partial or empty mag with you ("Don't abandon essential equipment"). Further penalties are given for ending an exercise by simply putting your gun in the holster; you should remember to reload so chat you walk off the range with the most rounds possible in your gun. Let me tell you, chat's hard to remember if, on thousands of shooting practice strings at the range, you always holstered without reloading.

Stage 5, It's Not Over Yet, involved starting nosetonose with the head of a gang whose three buddies were arrayed closely behind him. The RO yelled "Give us your money" to start the scene. You had two seconds, not to get started, but to finish the problem. I drew, yelling "No!" simultaneously and fired once at all four targets which obligingly fell like bowling pins. Time was just a hair over two seconds. Some people struck the closest target with a fist or heel of hand while shooting; some people wisely moved to one side out of the line of force while shooting ("Get Off the line!"). Some people learned that their preferred mode of carry (a shoulder holster for example) is nearly useless in close quarters under such extreme time pressure.

In a subsequent stage with virtually the same setup of four close targets one of them had to get shot in the head when body shots did not take it down ("Execute failure drills. ").

On Stage 4, I used my backup gun for the first and only time ("Use the equipment you carry''). It was a house clearing end as I went through firing my primary gun I reloaded behind the cover of an interior doorway using the spare mag on my belt As I finished the last room and approached the back door I knew the exercise probably wasn't over yet ("Don't relax vigilance"), and I knew there would never be a better opportunity to holster my gun with the partly depleted magazine and draw the fully loaded second Browning from my Alessi shoulder holster I didn't need more than a few more shots but it was comforting to know they were there if I did need them.

In house interiors some people have a tendency to take a few hesitating steps forward to peek and a few backward to hide as they try to search a room This is known as "chicken walking " and is penalized by the judges.

Overheard at the NTI

"I haven't shot that stage yet don't tell me anything about it!" (the most commonly heard comment from shooters)

"How are you doing so far?" (the most common conversational gambit "Uh I'm uh learning a lot" (the most comnon response)

"I never even saw his gun until I got hit" (a common comment on the Simunitions stages)

"In real life bad thing usually happen when you least expect them " Skip Gochenour

"I realized that if someone came after me to get at my husband (a real possibility given his work prosecuting criminals) I would be a terrible liability to him if I weren't trained in what to do" Lucy Cartwright explaining why she got interested in learning selfdefense.

"Most people who need to be shot need to be shot soon and often Very few people need to be shot later and a little" Greg Hamilton

"In a home invasion the most important person there is you Not your spouse. Not your kids. You. This is because you are the only person who can save them. If you are killed in the first few seconds of the fight no body will protect them. Train yourself to take cover so you can stay alive long enough to protect them" John Farnam

"There is no way to get this kind of training in law enforcement."

"The best shooters in the world are no better at this than plain garden variety marksmen. Doing well has little to do with shooting and a lot to do with awareness"

Aimed fire is definitely the order of the day Some people used the unaimed "speed rock" for very close encounters but most of the targets are far enough away that using the front sight is a very good idea I could not have gotten the required head shot on several important targets without using aimed fire.

Skip Gochenour, says "No matter what you practice and plan, real life turns out differently." This doesn't mean that you shouldn't plan and practice. It means you should plan and practice so many things that you get used to doing things you haven't done before. It also means that at least some of the things you practice will become automatic, requiring little conscious effort to use in an emergency.

How's your target identification? Do you shoot at any targetshaped object downrange, or do you take the time (precious seconds, it feels like, when you are at least partly exposed to the target) to scan the figure in order to determine whether it is holding a picture of a knife, club, gun or nonweapon object?

One way to get ready for a particular stage, such as "The Bull Pen," is to look at the score sheet to see what the judges will be looking for. There's a short list for this one: overtime shots, extra hits, weapon retention, failure to get off the line of fire, failure to use cover, failure to maintain vigilance, and crowding. In this stage, a long, narrow indoor hallway with windows on both sides from which targets pop into you view, most shooters don't move ("Get off the line of fire") because there is no cover to move to; they forget that simply moving, even without cover makes them a much harder target. This is almost exclusively a target identification stage. Targets that, from one perspective, are armed may be innocent targets when seen from a different perspective. However, I heard that all the cops who shot this stage and identified the hostile target once shot it time and time again when it was innocent!

My usually flawlessly functioning HiPower had one malfunction on this stage, a timeconsuming double feed that was due to a magazine that was either defective or dirty. Drat!!

IPSC shooting is great for certain gun handling skills, but IPSC shooters here must have a great deal of trouble with cover, crowding, vigilance, equipment retention, and target identification.

SOURCES

Cor-Bon Custom Bullet
1311 Industry Rd., Dept. WG
Sturgis, SD 57785
800-626-7266

Gunsite Training Center PO Box 700, Dept. WG.
Paulden, AZ 86334
520-636-4565

Skip Gochenour
American Tactical Shooting
Association
[organizers of the NTI}
2600 North 3rd St., Dept. WC
Harrisburg, PA 17110
717-233-0402

InSights Training Center Inc.
PO Box 5385, Dept. WG
Bellevue, WA 98009
206-641-8175

Simunitions Technologies Inc.
366 Brayere St., Dept. WG
Ottawa, KIN 5E7
Canada
613-789-7010

ThermoTie
Jas Ideas Inc.
2901 North 78th St., Suite 20
Dept. WG
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
800-232-6741

NTI Winners:

1. John Holschen
2. Robert Clavin
3. Pedro Joaristi
4. Greg Hamilton
5. Peter Dayton
High Woman: Cathy Ayoob
High Realist: Mark Moritz

Essential for NTI:

· A gun (no ported barrels, compensators, optical sights, or extended magazines) that functions flawlessly with the ammo you carry.
· A concealed carry rig that permits fast draws and onehanded reholstering.
· Factory ammo (no reloads). The better you are, the less ammo you will need; 300 rounds will see the worst shooters through the event.
· Flashlight.
· Hat to protect you from the brutal Arizona sun.
· Fighting attitude.

Optional for the NTI:

· A backup gun
· Body armor
· Knife
· Long sleeves and gloves for Simunitions stages
· Knee or elbow pads

Unnecessary for NTI:

· A third gun
· Pepper spray
· A macho attitude
· Excuses, whining, sniveling,
complaining

The Trouble Twice as High stage took place in a twostory structure, and required going up one set of stairs and down another. The first target could hardly be seen around the edge of an open doorway, the muzzle of a gun barely visible along the subject's leg. I took out that target, and the stage judge later asked me if I'd really seen the gun, since apparently many competitors were shooting without having made proper identification of the target as hostile. The large downstairs room had several closets to check, which required some careful movement ("No chicken walking!") and target identification.

No wonder cops hate stairs. Going up the stairs there is incredible tension between the need to be quiet and cautious ("No noise!"), and the need to get out of such an exposed position ("Don't dawdle!"). I noticed a rather large gap under the door at the top, and peered through to determine that there was only one target within immediate range of the door, though I could not see whether it was armed. Still, it was much easier to open that door knowing exactly where to look on the other side.

Coming down the outside stairs was even worse than going up the inside stairs. You feel incredibly exposed on a staircase! My skin was almost crawling with the feeling that there was a target I should be seeing, but wasn't. Once on the ground, I found, and took out, the target that had been hiding under the riserless stairs, ready to attack me as soon as my ankles moved in front of his eyes.

I did miss one target in an upstairs alcove. I saw the target, and thought I had seen it all, weaponless right down to the ends of the arms, but I didn't look far enough to see the shadowed hand, which contained an Uzi ("Use a light if needed "). I got all the other hostiles, and no innocents.

The next stage was a speed stage, with another four of the new NTI targets arrayed as if in a gang. You had to start virtually nose-to-nose with the leader, and take care of all four threats in under two seconds. They are dressed, 3-dimensional, and topple easily if hit properly. The last one took a couple of shots to put away, so I was probably a bit beyond the time limit.

After those two stages, my hands aren't shaking, but I can tell my breathing is somewhat rapid and I pace the area outside with uncharacteristic nervous energy, all indications of stress.

The most controversial stage was the Standards, a timed exercise so difficult that Rob Leatham on a good day couldn't have made good shots within the time limits. How's this for a Standards challenge: start position is sitting in a chair with your hands flat on a little table five yards from three targets; you have 2 1/2 seconds to get off the line of fire (i.e., out of the chair), draw, and shoot two rounds on each of the three targets. At the seven yard line, the standards included a Tactical El Prez; 41/2 seconds to draw, put two rounds on each of three targets, do a mandatory reload (the only place in the match where a speed reload was not penalized), and then put one round in each body and one more round in each head. The Range Officers used standard IPSC timers for this event. The key to a good score was to ignore the buzzer signaling the end of the time limit, and keep shooting, because, after all, in a real shooting situation you wouldn't stop if you heard a beep, would you? ("Keep fighting. ") However, there were concerns about the wisdom of encouraging people to violate what is usually an important range safety rule, so this particular type of stress or may not be employed in future NTIs. 
 

A wonderful addition to the match this year was the large number of seminars that were offered during the three-day period. Without paying a cent above the registration fee, in addition to the experience of shooting in the match itself you could experience more than a dozen hours of instruction by such luminaries as Richard Jee, Richard Ryan, John and Vicki Farnam, Bruce and Lucy Cartwright, and the fine staff of Greg Hamilton's InSights Training Center.

Gunsite, in Paulden, AZ, is the perfect place for this event. The shooting facilities are superb, and the natural surroundings magnificent. Behind the juniper trees that dot the landscape it is easy to get out of sight of all human activity, and experience the wilderness that is the American desert. The wildlife that we were warned about apparently stayed away from the noise of guns; I didn't see a single jackrabbit, snake, or antelope.

I'm sure the men appreciate the Port-A-Potties scattered around the Gunsite property, but their small size is incompatible with a woman in full gunfighting gear; thank goodness for the real bathrooms by the Gunsite office!

Dying is Good for You

This year saw a strong attempt to limit the "gamesmanship" involved, and increase the learning experience. Only the top five winners were announced; no other places were made public. But if you participated, you know how you did, and the lessons of the NTI ("Don't abandon your equipment, " "Don't dwell in doorways or windows, " "Don't shoot your gun empty," "No chicken walking!") will stay with you forever.

Shakespeare said "Cowards die a thousand times before their deaths; the brave man dies but once." At the NTI, the opposite is true. The people brave enough to test themselves in this incredibly difficult match know that they are likely to "die" time after time after time in these simulations in order to learn what they need to know to survive on the street. The cowards are those who are afraid to find out whether their tactics actually work.

The future of NTI is, sadly, somewhat in doubt as this is being written. The amount of effort required to put on an event of this complexity is massive; the benefit, for those able to attend, is immeasurable. If you would like to express your interest in attending a future NTI, send a stamped, selfaddressed envelope to American Tactical Shooting Association at the address in the source list.

(Another scenario from the NTI can be found in the Defensive Strategies column on the next page.)

About the Author: Lyn Bates is the Vice President of We are AWARE (Arming Women Against Rape and Endangerment), and an instructor at Lethal Force Institute. She is a competitive shooter, and is certif ed to teach a range of selfdefense techniques. Her Internet email address is bates@aware. org.

Defensive Strategies:

Hostage Pizza!

By Lyn Bates,
Contri/outing Editor

I phoned an order for my favorite pizza (mushrooms, green peppers, and pepperoni), and drove to the pizza place to pick it up. It is a very small, one room restaurant with a lone proprietor/chef. When I walked in, I noticed that I was the only customer.

The proprietor explained that my pizza wasn't quite ready, and invited me to sit down. I took the chair he indicated. It was in a good tactical location, against the wall at one end of the restaurant, facing the counter and cash register at the other end; the door I came in was to my right, near the corner that intersected with the wall behind me.

The pizza chef, making conversation, complained about having been robbed three times recently. I looked around for exits (the door I came in seemed to be the only one) and for places to take cover (nothing at all near this end of the room).

The door opened and two men entered, dressed in camouflage from head to toe. Immediate alert! Condition Orange!

One of the men moved toward the counter, saying "Howzzit goin', man?" in a threatening tone. The other, much closer to me, captured my attention because he was looking directly at me. I wondered why he didn't stay with his buddy.

I check his hands. Empty.

Suddenly my attention was jerked back to the area by the cash register by the chef yelling "Help!" It is the only word he managed to get out, since the first man had moved behind the counter, pulled a knife grabbed the unlucky restaurateur from behind, and put the knife to his throat.

By this time, I was on my feet, revolver drawn from the waistband where I'd stashed it just minutes before, wishing desperately for cover and shouting "Don't move!" at them both. The nearer robber, empty handed, ignored my command and moved toward me, not super fast, but purposefully, his hands still empty.

What objective could he have, if not to try to take my gun? I took a step back, trying to increase the distance between us as I continued to command him to stop. No good. When he crossed that invisible line that separates "social distance" from "threat distance," I realized that I must fire, or be killed with my own gun.

The sights were clear on his chest as I shouted "No!" one more time, pulling the trigger until he collapsed on the ground next to the door.

Now attention swung back to the hostage scene at the other end of the restaurant. Both owner and robber seem amazed that I had a gun, and the brazenness to use it. They seemed stunned, frozen together while Phase One of the gun battle took place.

Now the man with the knife was either unwilling, or too frightened, to put it down. Hostage negotiation instructions whirled in my brain as I tried to take control of the situation. Don't let him get near you. Keep your gun ready to fire at any moment. Use your voice to try to calm them both down.

The large chef made quite an effective shield for the slightly smaller felon with the knife. There was no good shot to take.

Time to talk. "Drop the knife!" is what comes naturally to mind, so I said it several times, but Goofus apparently thought his chances would be better if he maintained complete control of his hostage. He started to walk his captive toward the door, carefully keeping his back to the wall and the hostage between his body and my gun.

My gun. A revolver. Six shots, but I fired two, or was it three, at the first man. No spare ammo. I'd better make good use of my rounds. The chef got his voice back. "Help me! Help me!" he shouted, adding to the general noise and stress level without actually helping himself at all.

"Let him go!" I said, remembering that commands should be short, easy to understand, and to the point. "No, I'll kill him!" the slob replied, taking another step or two toward the door, "Put the gun down, or I'll kill him!"

Bargains with criminals have a way of being bad for the noncriminal party. I would never put the gun down, but I moved it a few degrees away from the two men, hoping that Goofus would feel secure enough to drop the knife, but he simply repeated his threats.

By this time he had moved past the body of his fallen comrade and was standing with his back against the door. I was desperately afraid of what would happen if he got the hostage out of the restaurant. "If you put the knife down, I'll put the gun down," I offered.

"No, put your gun down," he countered. "Put the gun down," the terrified chef echoed. The verbal dance continued around the same pattern 3 or 4 times more, resulting in the same standoff.

Or was it the same? Maneuvering backward toward the door, Goofus finally exposed his right hip behind his hostage. This is the opening I've been waiting for! Sights, squeeze trigger...

The sound of the shot echoed in my ears as I raised the gun for another shot, this time at the shoulder the captor had just unwittingly exposed. Another trigger pull, and...

"You shot me!" the chef yelled. It must be an arm wound, since that's what was below my point of aim and shots that don't go quite on target under stress tend to be pulled low. I had to ignore him and continue to look for an opening.

The chaos in front of me now included two screaming men, but no apparent cessation of hostilities. I could not tell whether my shots had had an effect or not, but despite all the confusion going on in front of my eyes, there was still a chance for another shot, a shoulder one this time, and I took it.

Finally, that ended the fight. But I left out one important part.

Sometime between my first shot at the knifeman and my last, I felt what nobody wants to feel in a gunfight -the sensation of being hit with a bullet. Damn! It was a good solid center hit in the belly, a couple of inches above my navel. I registered that I was hit, but because I stayed on my feet it was relatively easy to keep fighting, and shooting. Later, I couldn't remember, and still can't, whether I was shot before I undertook Phase Two of the gunfight, or after I had fired once, or twice.

It was as if shooting and being shot took place on two different TV channels, not synchronized with one another. I can replay one or the other in my mind, but I can't put them together.

Long after the scenario was over, I was still going over and over the situation in my mind. Suddenly an important question was raised in my mind as insistently and painfully as the welt on my skin where I was hit. Where did the shot that hit me come from? Goofus had a knife in one hand the whole time; if he had let go of the hostage to pull a gun with his other hand (an unlikely possibility), the hostage would probably have twisted free.

The only answer is obvious, with the wisdom of hindsight. The first man, down on the floor with 2 or 3 shots in him, was not dead or incapacitated. Either tunnel vision during the second phase of the gunfight, or my own arms holding my gun outstretched, blocked me from seeing him going for his gun. Was he slow and subtle, or fast and obvious? I don't remember. Why didn't I take a shot at the hostagetaker's head? Because in this scenario at the National Tactical Invitational match, we had been requested by the match officials not to take head shots. Simunitions paint pellets (the "bullets" we were firing at one another through specially modified guns) move fast enough to be dangerous, and I was unwilling to depend totally on the head and neck protection we were all wearing.

Hostage situations are very, very difficult to deal with, even when there is only one perpetrator. There are some things I could have done that might have made things better, but there were also a lot of things I might have done that would have made them worse.