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“Tactical Lessons from the
2005 Polite Society Event”

By:  Tom Givens

 

 

Note: Mr. Givens completed a 25 year career in law enforcement and specialized security work. For over twenty years Tom's duties have included firearms instruction and he has trained law enforcement officers at the local, state, and federal level; foreign government agents; and military personnel. He has completed courses at Gunsite, the FBI Academy and has trained with most of the well-known instructors in the US.  He is now the owner of Rangemaster training facility in Memphis, TN.

 

Each winter, Rangemaster hosts our annual Tactical Conference in Memphis.  Seventy to eighty-five practitioners from literally all over the U.S. converge here for classroom seminars, hands-on exercises in our mat rooms, and some very realistically oriented shooting exercises. Each year some of the best trainers in the country provide lectures and practical demonstrations for the attendees, with classes going on concurrently all over the facility.  In 2005 the trainers present included John Farnam, Skip Gochenour, Steve Moses, Karl Rehn, David Blinder and others.  Several members of the ATSA team attended this year, and had a blast. This has become one of the premiere events of the year for serious students of the defensive arts.

 

At the same time all these classes are going on, we conduct a shooting event in our large indoor range. Attendees have an assigned time to report to the range and be subjected to a series of shooting exercises designed to test their repertoire of handgun skills under stressful, realistic conditions. All shooting is done from concealment, with carry gear and full power ammo. Back-up guns are specifically allowed, the use of cover, when available, is required, and all shooting is done in dim light. Lighting varies from stage to stage, from almost dark to the light levels one normally encounters in public urban areas at night.

 

We had some thought provoking stages this year, and I will share some of our staff’s observations about the performances they saw throughout the event.

 

The first stage involved standard skill drills. These are intended solely to test the practitioner’s shooting and gun handling skills under a wide variety of circumstances. This is the ONLY stage fired on cardboard targets and scored for points/time. 

 

The first two strings in the standards tested the ability to shoot from retention and transition to sighted fire as the shooter moved away from the targets, and to smoothly reload when the weapon runs dry. Most shooters handled these tests well, except for a noted lack of accuracy when shooting from a tight retention position.  The third stage involved having the shooter start on both knees, as if he had been knocked down. On signal, the shooter had to draw, fire at several targets, reload, and fire several additional shots, ALL while using the non-dominant hand only.  This simulated the loss of function in the dominant arm at the outset of a fight. Many shooters had difficulty in presenting their weapon from concealment with their support side hand. Some of the best performances on this test came from those who opted to draw a BUG with the support hand, with the BUG located on their person for just such an eventuality.

 

Other tests in the Standards included shooting with the aid of a flashlight, both in the open and behind cover, as well as performing gun manipulations, such as reloads, while using a flashlight.

 

There were no real revelations for us during the Standards, but a number of shooters learned that they could not access their primary sidearm with their support side hand, as worn. This is something best learned in a training environment.

 

In addition to the Standards, there were three scenario driven exercises. Each of these featured reactive mannequin targets that were very real looking, especially in dim light.  These targets are very similar to those used at NTI and only fall over when struck solidly in a realistic vital zone.  The targets were clothed, have full facial features, and in some cases were armed. Other targets, unarmed, were positioned as bystanders, waiters, family members, etc, all according to the scenario.

 

In “Dining Disaster” the shooter begins seated at a table in a restaurant. There is a waiter across the table and a couple (man and woman) off to his side and a bit further away. Behind them appear three armed gang members who begin shooting up the place. The practitioner has to respond. Seated next to the practitioner was a live role player who represented the practitioner’s dinner partner who becomes hysterical when the gunplay begins. The shooter had to physically restrain the panicked associate while threading rounds past the waiter and the bystander couple. There was a draconian penalty throughout the event for any hits on a non-threat target just as in real life. The combination of shooting with one hand from an awkward position while dealing with a squirming, screaming dinner partner made for an interesting problem.  As John Farnam has repeatedly pointed out in his writings, most of us do not practice enough at one handed shooting. This scenario is a perfectly plausible reason one might be forced to shoot well with only one hand available.

 

In “Carjack!” the shooter began seated in a mock-up vehicle pulled up next to a gas pump. Beyond the pump was another mock up vehicle pointed directly at the shooter’s car. This other vehicle had actual headlights which were shining directly into the shooter’s eyes. There was one armed carjacker in the vehicle and another on foot, partially obscured by the gas pump. The shooter had to engage the targets through the passenger side window while still seated in the driver’s seat.  The strong light from the suspect vehicle’s headlights caused some shooters real problems and again shooting was from an awkward, unorthodox position.  Some shooters found their pistol difficult to access while seated. Again, these are the sort of problems our practice regimen must address. In the real world we are often not standing fully upright on a fixed firing line, with both hands free.  Even a bit of dry practice in your vehicle, while seated at a desk, lying on the floor, etc, would reveal equipment weaknesses before they become a critical factor in a confrontation.

 

The final stage was “Family Rescue”.  In the scenario, you have just spoken with family members by cell phone as you drive home so you are aware that they are in your home awaiting your arrival. When you approach your front door, you hear shouts, screams, and shooting inside your own home where you know family members were present three minutes ago. This left the practitioner no choice but to enter.

 

All of the inhabitants were 3-D mannequins with full clothing, make-up, wigs, etc.  Prior to entry, the practitioner was shown color photos of two family members who must not be engaged. Immediately upon entry, in the first room, the practitioner was faced with three men coming his way. One in the front has a baseball bat and he is followed by two men with guns.  The lead mannequin with the baseball bat was a family member fleeing the two gunmen behind him. Unfortunately, he was shot by several practitioners as they suddenly saw him as they came through the door.  Once these targets had been sorted out, the shooter moved to another doorway to an adjoining room.

 

Just as the shooter began to pie that corner, he would see a figure just behind the door. Just as he sees that figure, another target a bit further away fires at the practitioner with a sawed off 20 gauge shotgun firing theatrical blanks which are LOUD and have a huge flash. The target just beyond the door turns out to be the other family member (a female) holding a large knife while the other two mannequins are hostile targets armed with guns (including the sawed off 20 gauge).

 

A surprising number of practitioners shot the female family member apparently mostly as a startle response to being shot at by the shotgun. This female was the only female in the scenario but was engaged several times because she had a knife and again, because of the sudden stress caused by the unexpected shot from downrange.

 

The primary lesson from this stage was that we need to train more in threat assessment. A lot of shooters seem to think the mere presence of a weapon justifies engaging a target.  In this scenario the male family member was the only target with a full beard and the female family member was the only female but both were shot by several practitioners.  Obviously, this lack of target discrimination would have tragic results in the real world.

 

The event went off with no injuries or safety issues and  everyone involved learned some valuable lessons. The key to maximizing the benefit of such an event is for each practitioner to honestly critique his own performance and identify technique or equipment weaknesses that only show up under these rigorous, realistic conditions. These deficiencies can then be addressed in training, and remedied.