Tactical Practice, February 2004

Topic: Movement

February's Tactical Practice session was very well attended. We had probably 20 people there with somewhere around 15 people shooting. Lisa Huml ran this session and her theme was movement. Of the many USMC Rules of Gun Fighting at least four of them directly or indirectly have to do with movement. They are:

-If your shooting stance is good, you're probably not moving fast enough nor using cover correctly.
-Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal movements are preferred.)
-If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running.
-Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.

Lisa held a brief session in the meeting room where she discussed the importance of movement. Too often we find ourselves standing still because that is how we practice. However, in a real combat situation movement is your friend. Creating distance between yourself and your adversary, or simply moving yourself out of the line of incoming fire could mean the difference between winning and losing a deadly force encounter.

We proceded to the range and ran through a few warm up shooting exercises. Two hand, single hand strong side, single hand weak side. With that completed we began running one at a time through drills where we moved away from an attacker while firing and reloading. At all times, as usual, there was a range safety officer in the immediate vicinity of the shooter to help control the exercise. After everyone had gone through the backing away exercise Lisa brought up some barriers and using the blue dummy gun demonstrated moving and shooting parallel to several attackers using both strong hand and weak hand shooting. We worked that scenario until everyone had a chance to practice it and then ended the day with a few low light/tactical flashlight drills.

Lisa facilitated an excellent session and all who attended and stayed enjoyed themselves. It was great to see some new faces there, graduates of recent Basic Pistol and Personal Protection courses held at MWSA. There were many, many great photos taken and below are just a few that showed the live fire action that occurred throughout the morning. I'm always trying to catch brass flying mid air in a camera shot and caught several in todays TP including one shot (first picture on left in third row down) where I caught two casings from a double tap - one is just exiting the ejection port and the other is only a few feet down. Great shooting by all. Out standing job Lisa!

Click on thumbnails to see larger photos