I was invited recently to shoot at Professional shooter Taran Butler’s private range just north of LA. It was a good day at the range with good company.
Anyway, I’m not a big “match” (no one is shooting back at you either) shooter, but Taran is obviously a Pro and was a super nice guy. I think match shooting has its place and you can draw a lot of great lessons learned, in fact Taran taught me a new trick. However, BIG HOWEVER, match shooting is not true combat or LEO stress shooting. Sure there are the pressures and stress of competitive shooting but it’s very different when your life is on the line and there’s people that may shoot back. One of the things the SOF community is great at is using “flow” and tactical stress training techniques to hone instinct razor-sharp.
Smooth is fast and fast is smooth. I see too many people running stress drills all wrong (if you’re practicing for offensive and defensive shooting that is). They are building bad habits by going too fast. Throwing shots off target and running around like tactical fanboys on speed. It’s obvious to me that this is influenced by Pro shooting events and people that don’t know how to train for worst case scenarios (car jacking). Just ask my friend Chris Kyle who smoked two car jackers in TX. He shot them both dead, outnumbered 2 to 1 and he had to draw his gun. Slow methodical accurate aggression will win every time…and your rounds will be center mass every time.
Please don’t think this is related to Taran. He was running some bad ass drills and obviously knew what he was talking about, AND he taught me something new. So what did he do? He adjusted my grip to bring my left hand (right-handed) thumb down lower and parallel with my right thumb. It instantly improved my grip and accuracy and I went “duh”, fixed my grip and am a better shooter for it—thank you Taran. Just goes to show that you can always learn something new (says this former SEAL sniper instructor) and to always keep an open mind…
Thank you for the hospitality Taran and also to Brian C. for the invite. That Vickers (pictured with me) Infinity .45 is BA and holds 25 plus 1. Here’s Taran in action below. Don’t want to car jack this guy either…
