---

NTI XIV

Lessons Learned

By: Richard Wright

 

 

            ATSA Village

 

Upon reflection, the skills that served me best in ATSA village are the same skills that I practice every day.  They are Awareness and Avoidance.  By constantly being aware of the environment that you are in, and of the people around you, you get to see situations begin to develop that can draw you into a confrontation that you don’t want to be in. You need to realize that if there is no change in your actions you may very quickly find yourself right in the middle of some unfortunate situation   However, once you have been made aware of a developing situation, you need to alter your actions, and/or behavior to avoid the approaching dilemma.  Be aware!

 

Avoidance can be as simple as altering your direction, or acknowledging and challenging a person who has gotten too close.

 

The failure to recognize developing situations and react to them before they get out of hand is priceless.

 

Disengagement.  If somehow, despite all of your efforts, you suddenly find yourself thrust into a situation, you have to make an immediate decision as to what you can do, I.E. can you disengage and leave the threat area without physical contact (I am referring to violent contact, not just pushing-off someone as you make your way by him/her), or must I stay and fight?  The key here is to be able to accomplish this without stopping.  Movement is a key part in our defense craft and whose value is not taught enough.  If you refuse to stop, to get involved, then they will have a harder time in achieving what they want to get from you.  Again this ties back to being aware of your environment, I.E. where is the exit?  Where is cover that I can use?  Movement without thought may save the day, but you will achieve the same goal easier and faster by developing a plan, and executing it immediately.   A poor plan acted on immediately, beats a perfect plan left unused.

 

Along with movement, I find that verbalization to be a key component.  Be civil and polite, acknowledge the presence of others, but keep moving.  Failure to not recognize and acknowledge them, (disrespect?), may in fact increase their ire towards you to a point where they may go ahead and complete their mission towards you, even though they no longer dominate the situation.          

 

Check behind you often.  When approaching and departing an area, the habit of checking what’s behind you is an excellent skill to develop.  Practicing ways to do this without being obvious is something that you can do all year.  For example, when I see a situation developing ahead of me, I might stop and say something to the effect that I left something in the office, car, house, etc, and reverse direction.  Using mirrors and windows in nearby buildings can accomplish the same thing.  This skill is doubly important once you realize that something is not quite right and you need to act.  All of these things are just intelligence gathering steps for you to process and act upon.

 

 

The live fire stages.

 

In addition to the above steps that I believe are critical to survive in today’s world, we also need to work on rule 4 issues; that is, what is my target and what lies behind it.  This year there were 2 clear situations where there was a choice of backstop available to the participant should he decide to shoot.  They were in the pneumatic house and L-Shaped house.   For example, in the pneumatic house, stepping off the line of attack I dropped to my knee and shot at the attacking person so that any rounds that missed or penetrated through the attacker went into the brick wall.  I also had dropped to one knee so that my rounds would be at an upward angle (which was a good thing as my injured friend was right behind the assailant in the line of fire).  In the L-Shaped house, when the door popped open at the end of the hall, I was almost to the doorway that contained my daughter, I stepped to my left, seeing the brick wall behind him, and again dropped to 1 knee to angle the shot upward.  This was also fortuitous as my wife was right behind the assailant in the closet.

 

Shooting.  From the debrief, it was learned that a number of people had shot their family members while in the L-shaped house.  Last year I did too, and resolved to never do that again.  How?  By taking just a little longer to acknowledge the action occurring in front of me.  I am confident enough in my gun handling skills to position myself (movement) and gun, in such a manner, that I have some precious time in which to process what is going on around me and shoot should I need to.  

 

This year, I had made the conscious decision that if I need to shoot; I was going to shoot failure-to-stop shots.  That is, I was going to shoot 2-3 rounds into center mass (CT area) and then immediately transition to the head.  If the head was there in my sights in the follow-through, I took the shot.  If not, I tracked the bad guy to the ground.  I also had decided that movement was my friend, and although I am aware that I stood and fired in some stages, I also remember that I moved while firing in others. I need to continue to work on my shooting while moving skills.

 

 

Final comments.

 

We must always remember that we are responsible for each and every shot that we fire.  The final resting place for our rounds needs to be in the person accosting us, or into a “hard” cover, and no where else.  In the intensity of battle, it is all too possible to let the heat of the moment get the best of us, and we fire, hitting a non-threatening party, or a family member.  We need to take this action seriously.  We need to remember our humanity and compassion for others and not take these actions lightly.  Venues like the NTI expose us to this challenge, and we should learn from it and take these valuable lessons with us.