I spent ten years on active duty in the United States Army. However I don’t BS anyone, no “during my fifth ‘Nam tour…” stories here, I was a clerk in the Army. For my first three years in the Army I was also an Airborne paratrooper. However I was also a clerk in the Airborne. I never saw combat. Just dumb luck, I was part of the only Airborne unit on Fort Bragg that did not go to Grenada. And by the time Desert Storm rolled around, I was part of a unit on Fort Lewis that also didn’t get sent to combat.
I have never been a police officer. For a brief period of time I was an armed security guard, but I’ve never been a cop. I’m glad we have them, but for myself, my attitude was, “Who wants a job where you have to spend significant amounts of time dealing with the scum of the Earth?”
Having said all that, I will also say that, while I have a lot of respect for those who wear various uniforms, and the difficult, sometimes dangerous jobs they do, I do get a bit tired of the people, in and out of uniform, who think that wearing a particular outfit automatically makes a person a gun expert. “Well, you KNOW they’re a great shooter because they’re a cop/soldier/SWAT team member/Navy SEAL/fill in the blank.”
But do we really know that?
Recently I was having a conversation with someone within the gun industry, who mentioned they had just gotten back from attending a regional SWAT competition. This is an event where every police department within a multi-state area sends their SWAT team to compete, to find out who has the best team. He described one of the stages to me. “You start behind a Bianchi barricade, you have six targets, they’re all the steel plates that are shaped like USPSA or IDPA targets, you know the ones.”
“Yeahhh…”
“They’re set up, three on each side, in this sort of V formation, on either side you’ve got a target at seven yards, another target at ten yards, and another at twelve yards.”
“Okay…”
“The drill was to draw from the holster and hit each target once. How fast do you think you could do that drill?”
“That’s it? Just a draw and six shots?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let me ask a few questions first. Can I wear my everyday carry gear?”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t have to go from concealment, I can just have the gear out in the open.”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t have to hit an A-zone, or a down-zero circle, there are no scoring areas on the targets, all I have to do is hit these huge steel plates somewhere.”
“Right.”
“Can I start leaning out around the cover so I can have the first target visually acquired before I draw?”
“Yes.”
“And I assume I don’t have to pie inward from the outside like at an IDPA match, there’s nothing to stop me from shooting the closest target first, then working my way outward, on each side.”
“Right.”
“Will they let me shoot all the targets from around the right side, or do I have to shoot the right side targets from the right side and the left side targets from the left side?”
“You have to shoot the right targets from the right, and the left targets from the left.”
“Okay. And I don’t have to do a Reload With Retention or a Tactical Reload or even a speedload while I’m moving the gun from one side of the barricade to the other, it’s just ‘Shoot the three targets on one side, move the gun to the other side, shoot those three targets, no reload in-between.’”
“Right.”
“Also, I’m going to assume the targets are set up so there’s not a big transition between targets, essentially, from the shooter’s view, the targets are right next to each other, so it’s a short transition between targets, it’s just that each succeeding target gets, de facto, a little smaller because it’s further away.”
“Right. So how fast do you think you could do that drill?”
“Well, okay, I’m going to be really conservative here. I’m NOT going to give you the times I think I could do if I pushed it. This is what I know I can do, on demand, if I’m just kind of loping along.”
“Okay.”
“To start with, I’m going to draw to the target on the right at seven yards. I’m right handed and I wear my holster on the right side of my body, so it’s going to work best for me to lean to the right on the draw, it’s a shorter, more directional draw. I’m going to lean out to visually acquire the target beforehand if they’ll let me. And I’m going to engage the close target first because I can do a slightly faster draw that way than if I drew to the far target first.”
“Okay.”
“I would say I could fire my first shot in about 1.5 seconds. Then, since my transitions between targets are really short, even if the targets are further away for each shot, those are still short transitions, and in the overall scheme of things, easy shots, I’d say I could hit the second and third targets with .5 second transitions for both targets. So that takes me up to 2.5 seconds, I’ve dealt with everything on the right side.”
“Okay.”
“Now I have to transition the gun over to the left target array. I know that when I’m shooting the IDPA classifier, on Stage 3, String 1, I can get the gun from the right side of the barricade to the left side in around 2.5 seconds. But I’m shooting on targets 20 yards away, and I have to do a Reload With Retention in-between. Okay, I’m going to be REALLY conservative here, I’m going to say my transition here will go two seconds. In reality it would be a lot faster, but again I’m being really conservative. So we add two seconds to my 2.5 seconds, I’m up to 4.5 seconds to get to the point I’m engaging the first target around the left side. Then a couple more .5 second transitions to deal with the last two targets.
“So,” I finished up, “I’d say, very conservatively, I can do that drill in 5.5 seconds. In reality, it’s probably going to be somewhere in the 4s. If I wanted to push it, I could probably get it down into the 3s, but I’m going to say 5.5 seconds.”
“Okay. Would you care to take a guess how fast the SWAT cop shot this drill who had the single best score on the stage? And not only did he have the single best score on this stage, not only was he part of the team that won the overall competition, he had the single best final overall score for the entire match. This is the best guy they’ve got, in a multi-state area. How fast do you think he did this drill?”
“Ummm…ten seconds.”
“Slower.”
“…Twelve seconds.”
“Slower.”
“Fifteen seconds.”
“Slower.”
“Twenty seconds?”
“Slower.”
Alright, by this time I was amazed, so I said, “I give up, I can’t imagine anyone taking more than twenty seconds to complete this drill.”
“Thirty seconds.”
“…Wow.”
So, I was always curious how well I could actually run this drill, and how close to reality were my time estimates. Last week I went out to the range and set it up, using IDPA targets, and ran through it with my friend Cameron. And an electronic timer, of course. I used my everyday carry gear and gun, a Blade-Tech Standard Belt Holster, matching Blade-Tech double mag pouch, and a Glock 17. I kept track of my times on my first run-through, because that’s the only one that really counts. Performance on demand.
I had estimated 1.5 seconds for the draw to my first shot. It actually took 1.54 seconds. So I was a little slower there than I’d estimated. I had estimated transitions of .5 second each to Targets 2 and 3. They were actually both .39 second. So I picked up a bit of time there. To get the gun over to the left side and hit Target 4, I had estimated 2.0 seconds. It actually took me 1.48 seconds, so I picked up a lot of time there. Then my transition to Target 5 was .39 second (I was all about the .39 second transitions on this drill, apparently), then my final transition, to Target 6, actually went .42 second. My total time to complete the drill was 4.61 seconds. So my estimate of “probably somewhere in the 4s” was correct.
Shooting on IDPA targets, I only dropped one point off possible. My final shot, on Target 6 at 12 yards around the left side barricade, was just slightly outside the down-zero circle. The other five shots were all good, solid down-zeroes.
So that means, as a normal citizen shooter, who has been out of the Army since 1992 (not that being in the Army to start with had anything to do with being a good shooter), my performance was a bit over six and a half times better than the best SWAT team shooter in a multi-state area. After that, I did a bit of further practice, seeing how low I could get my time. My best performance, with all rounds on-target, was 4.11 seconds. I found that if I pushed it, I could indeed get it down into the high 3s, but at that speed I started consistently dropping one or two shots off-target. So somewhere in the low/mid-4s seems to be my current level of performance on this drill.
After that, Cameron shot the same drill. His passes were in the high 6s/low 7s. Which means he’s only a little over four times as good as the best SWAT team shooter in a multi-state area.
All this is not meant to denigrate SWAT team members. Nor is it meant to ignore the fact there are some SWAT team members who are, in fact, awesome shooters. For instance, here in Washington state, the Seattle SWAT team has Darrion Holiwell who is a Master class USPSA shooter. But he’s not a good shooter because he’s a SWAT team member. He’s a good shooter because he’s an enthusiast who’s worked his butt off to be that good.
So let’s get away from thinking you need to be a cop or a soldier to have great skill at arms. Let’s also get away from thinking that wearing a particular uniform, or having a particular job, automatically makes a person a good shooter. Time, discipline, and hard work will make you a good shooter.