I watch all the famous Youtube videos like you guys do. I cannot for the life of me figure out the point of this. So I'm asking you guys if there is a point.

A guy is making a video and is out in the desert by himself. He shoots a magazine of rounds, pulls the gun to his chest, looks right, then left, then closes his eyes and exhales.

What in the actual hell????

He's trying to maintain situational awareness by breaking the tunnel vision.

I find that the obsessive, robotic assessing is just as big a problem because they are just training the motion and not really "seeing" anything.

So they're not teaching the twirl anymore?

The last one I saw they had the students twirl around; in fact the instructor had to remind them to pause at the left, rear, and right and not just spin.

As mentioned, to break tunnel vision. Popularized by cool guy units, used to see Recon guys do it a lot.  BUT...

Fuck it while we're on it. 

I Quit!   That was pretty damn funny.  David

Pat's a boss!

ETA:  
Looked like he was channeling his inner Corky.

I trained with Clay this past December, he feels the same as Mac, who I trained with last November.

YES!!! Thank you for posting those videos, that is exactly my thoughts. Makes absolutely no fucking sense standing perfectly still shooting paper...and then after snatching the gun to your chest, snap your neck right, then left, OK no more threats big exhale...

H-o-l-y shit

NAILED IT!!!!!!

Starting ~3:05. This is what I always think of.

You guys are posting a bunch of gold. LMAO

As much as I am loving this thread, it probably belongs in GD, not here.

Oh I don't know, I think it's relevant.   At my range there were guys that did this after going to classes.  I am in no position to know what is smart or not smart.  I THINK the basis was to get people to scan for other bad guys.  Not so much of "breaking" tunnel vision.  Or both.  I don't know exactly how it is taught but I would think it's a good idea to look for other bad guys if you just had to engage one and not get so focused on a single target.   The video from Clay seemed to focus on the only aspect of doing this was to break tunnel vision.    And that's not really QUITE how I understood it.   I thought it was more like, if you ended up having tunnel vision, you might have to scan harder for other threats because you're not seeing in your peripheral as well.   Is that feasible?

Funny stuff ...

Reminds me of that Phu Loc dude's M1 Garand video, ... "running errands with my Garrund."

That was my take on the scanning part.  Where I trained, the instructors taught a 360-degree scan, calling it "Check Your World," before re-holstering.

Students were trained to pull their pistols back in to chest level and immediately scan 360 for other threats.

Did the instructors have combat beards on?

Scan, twirl, do whatever you want.
Whoever started teaching the goddamn pistol snatch back has set practical accuracy back like 30 years for handguns. I have seen dozens of new comp shooters and students in CCDW classes over the past 5 years performing the snatch back sometimes as soon as the trigger breaks, other times between every shot.

After I unload all of my 91 rounds of 180gr. 10mm +P+ Terminator JHP's, I turn and run away. IMO, skipping gives you a tactical advantage over normal running, plus it's fun! YMMV. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

I LOLd.  I feel the same way.  It looks stupid. 

This guy is awesome.

I LOL when I see guys at the range in the dedicated pistol range where you are lined up next to other shooters and they fire 1-3 rounds snatch the pistol back and do the search and assess.  I ran into a guy like this once he was hyper critical of everyones gear and shooting while at 10m could not hold a group bigger than a large pizza.  I eventually got ticked off when he criticized me for shooting a Glock and having GI AR mags and not p-mags.  He was not happy I called him a mall ninja and that my me and my Glock could out shoot him and his P30.  What is even greater is these guys "search and assess" so fast no way a brain can take in that amount of information.  If you wanted to search and assess and actually train you should have someone other than you setup random object in the search and assess range do your string of fire and when you search and assess identify these items.  Similar to what snipers are taught when they have to identify X amount of targets through a spotting scope and record as many as they can find.

Bro, do you even Prance?

The real world application is the Good Samaritan who confronted one of the Utah cop killers as he was pushing a shopping cart full of their guns in the door at Walmart.

He was shot square in the back by the female. Dead.

The issue is that you and I as a shooter don't have the omniscient view of a camera or winged supernatural being. All we get are two eyes and all we see is what our eyes are looking at. Focus on the one threat too much - which is a natural reaction - and you miss seeing another deadly threat coming at you from another direction.

Think Bambi vs the Velociraptors. Bambi needs to extend his visual awareness and look around. (Yah, Bambi was a boy. Watch the cartoon. Why some mothers would name her girl that is whatever.)

Also goes to range practice being stilted - instead of twenty guys on the line and having to adopt safety procedures to keep everyone from muzzling (and shooting ) their classmate, it's also difficult to exercise moving around. You don't just stand there in a High Noon Showdown - which range practice accentuates and even reinforces.

Nope, I'm getting behind the perp - moving 180 around him and he isn't going to be allowed to turn. It reduces his awareness and degrades their ability to react. If on my property I can then subdue him with a large heavy object. At least I have options. And it there is another tailgater it could put their partner in the line of fire which reduces and degrades their reaction.

Now, try practicing that on a live fire range with 20 other students. You'd need to be in a shoot house with 360 degree control. Those are few and far between. There are none within a 60 mile radius of my house as far as I know, closest one would be Ft Leonard Wood (MP School is conducted there.)

There's also the rote manner it's taught and conducted. I've seen it demonstrated, too, a long slow turn to look in both directions. What I'd be more interested in seeing is movement, which the human eye is made to see more readily, if or when someone presented their firearm. Those motions would be the bigger indicator than someone passively standing their with the gun up already. Maybe they are just waiting for eye contact - as most of the videos demonstrate, the Good Guy doesn't have his sights aligned and won't be able to beat them on the trigger pull.

I would rather attempt to circle toward the off hand with my weapon sighted in on their armpit, returning to a low groin target when I stop. I can then pan a lot more view and while moving I'm less of an easy target rather than just stand there being one. Ranges can't let you practice that. Classes conducted on ranges can only present limited instruction because of it.

1) Just because you have a CWP doesn't make you a SWAT member nor in the military. In fact there is a high, high, chance that as you are going after the active shooting perp YOU will be shot and killed by the responding police officers. Lesson is that guy had no business chasing the shopping cart attacker that was shooting in the air into Walmart. He was at the door, behind the guy, and he went away from the door into Walmart and ultimately died without stopping the guy. Simply leave and let trained professionals handle the situation. Life isn't COD where you can simply respawn at your safehouse.

2) Standing skill shooting paper or steel at the range and then looking left and right IS NOT going to give you the skills to achieve what you have in your mind of how it will go down when a multiple attacker situation is happening. It simply makes you look stupid.

the dude is... well, there's no other way to say it, if there's a person worth having a man-crush on in the shooting industry he's one of the handful.  Decades of experience being a legit cool guy, took it all and wrapped it into a successful career teaching police and civilians how to be bad asses through mixed firearm and strength training. Plus a lot of his mentality and how he arrived at what he teaches and why, and the ideology behind it is the same way I came to a lot of the same conclusion on my own so instead of me saying things that people go "uhhh who says that that sounds dumb" I can just post his vids and send the same message and the word gets spread with authority behind it, which hopefully can help bring more people up to the modern state of the art, and out of the 80's and 90's. 

Only the ones who were trying mightily to look like Chris.  

You shouldn't do it "as soon as the trigger breaks," I agree. They're doing it wrong.

But a lot of LEAs teach this move as part of a scan/re-assess protocol after shots have been fired at the closest/immediate threat.

In fact, as I recall, the FBI taught a similar "pull back" movement partly to avoid a gun-grab and to keep the gun under control while the agent scans for/assesses other threats around him, after the initial bad-guy goes down.  

Not arguing for it, just sayin'  FYI.

pure theatre

I always check my shot timer.

That's above my skill level.

Shoot man, what if you were getting the car and the wife and kids were in the checkout lane, and you saw a guy with a gun moving toward them.  Would you just not do anything?  


The one thing I don't understand about the criticism of this is this:  When you go to reholster, you're pulling your gun back to you.  Wouldn't it make sense to have a look around before doing so.  Or maybe just not reholster at all after a shooting?   I totally get how if you're training to bring your gun back right away after a couple of shots, that's just dumb.  You could totally do that without even thinking about it, prematurely.  

I guess the argument is just that, it's the range, and it's just building bad habits to do any of it.  Eh?  I don't see how it's bad to try and assess what's going on around you though.   Everyone keeps talking about capacity for the very fact of multiple attackers (or one of the reasons).  How do you not be aware of them without keeping your head on a swivel?

The best way I've seen it trained was the instructor held up a numbered and/or colored index card. You actually had to SEE instead of just moving your head left and right. You completed your course of fire, did the scan and once you focused back on the target you had to call out what you saw.

Jump to 0:55

Similar to what is taught at the SIG Academy - the instructors will hold up some fingers or be doing something behind you and you had to call out what you see.

If your doing the head twist might as well take a knee or run to cover right?  If you're "training like you fight" you're not going to stand stationary to be picked off.

Shit is stupid.

That doesn't have to do with what happened in the video. Every situation is different and I cannot say what I would do or wouldn't. However if I'm in Walmart and hear shooting I'm going to take myself and my family to cover and sit and wait with gun drawn until help arrives. I WILL NOT go looking for trouble trying to be the hero. My job is to protect my children and wife, not you or yours that is your job (obviously not you literally). I respect the guy immensely for doing what he did to try and stop the shooter. But in the end I think it was a dumb mistake and I hate that he did it and ended up dead, fucking terrible.

Here's the thing the way I understand it. 

The head thing came from limited degree movement, where guys training didn't have the availability to do full or even partial sweeps with their weapon. It was a method to keep people from adopting square range mentality. (I.E. narrow focus down range in a narrow FOV. Then of course, when doing things like shoot houses, or moment bays, sectors got cleared as per normal. 

But, like with everything, it became institutional habit, and because people witnessed cool guys doing it, they copied it and then it jumped to the civilian training world either by guys getting out and training people in it, or through emulation. (Which is why I laugh when people try to make arguments like "military shooting isn't like self defense shooting", people who say that don't know where 90% of what they learn comes from).

So... on one hand... yes.. its' stupid. On the other the intention starting out was based on a solid idea of breaking square range habit/ keep square range habits from forming if that was the only available training. 

Perfect world, scan 360 ready to blast fools and never re-holster until all threats are eliminated. THAT's the part that never gets passed along with emulation of the whole look left look right thing. 


eta- They even had us doing in in line companies in the Marines, though it DOES have the benefit of making visual contact with people in a unit setting, if not in something like MOUT where there is a 360 deg threat environment. 

So standing by yourself in a field with your head on a swivel doing ninja flips is kind of stupid.   BUT scan and assess, controlled breathing and the 5 step pistol presentation are sound tactics when done properly.  We have numerous people on this forum that go out and spend $1000 on "KIT" and put it in the closet when they are not posting selfies.  They also buy a shooting video where a bald headed tactical beard guy is trying to out do the other 20 people with videos so people with buy them.  Unfortunately you have to take a few classes and take what you like and throw out what you don't.  The issue is we all get lazy and go through the motions when shooting.  I will say some of thos videos make me laugh out loud.  

As for the Walmart guy, you really don't know what you will do until you are in the situation.  My number one mission is to protect the family but you hear screams or some other stressor and off you go without a plan.  It sucks but it happens.  David

Yep, I agree on that.



Yep, that's what I said before, although you said it better.

That "scan-360" maneuver    - along with, if you're turning around to move, the so-called "SUL" positioning of the pistol (muzzle down, gun pulled tight against your chest), is what I've seen being taught in several training courses attended by legally-armed civilians, along with a smattering of ex-mil and current LEOs. It's also what I've seen in current L.E. departmental training protocols, at least in my area. Scan, re-assess, scan, move as needed.

Quite some some years back, I also watched as FBI agents were being instructed on the "pull-the gun-back/SUL position/scan 360" drill, following the initial engagement.

Just what I know, dudes, not arguing for or against it.

The whole SUL thing does have a lot of buy in, and does have a lot of advantages over going all "charlies angle's" gun up 90 deg in the air. It keeps from being extended and grabbable*, as well as helps from flagging people in crowded situations. I personally don't go as tucked in, more of a 50/50 split between that and a low ready, but whatever works. But for LEO's who are more likely to engage with people around? Seems like a lot better position. 

*In USMC LINE/ MCMAP combatives training it's always ground in that "an extended limb is a broken limb" meaning if your arms aren't doing something important they better be pulled back in. I feel that extents to pistols too. They are a lever. 

That's how I was taught. In the Marine Corps Security Forces

Pulling back isn't bad, pulling back to fast is and I've caught myself doing it while recording my drills.

Agree. Well said.

I've got a spot I can shoot 360° and I'll shoot, turn, move to cover, etc. I'll even add in a little rock climbing and then shoot back from where I came

I agree, if your training to look for something....look for it don't move your head like a damn zombie.

There is standard tactical training that is similar to what you are describing, except for the closing of eyes and exhaling. Never heard of that and it defeats the purpose of scanning around you for threats before holstering your weapon.

I was with several other folks having beers and pizza watching the original M.V. episode on t.v. when this scene came on (Yeah, I know, that makes me officially ancient).

Anyway, myself and two of the guys there participated pretty regularly in IPSC/Defensive Pistol-type events at our local club.  We shot about every weekend and sometimes we'd get together after work during the week.  When we watched this scene, we were ALL certain that it had been edited to make the shooter only appear to be that fast.

Of course, he actually was that fast.

Stupid habit to force. Most of us are civilians and stats say 1 shooter at 3 yards. Sure be awre of your surroundings. If you're tier one go for it.lol.

Bingo!
It's needlessly taught. Most just do it cause they are told & never get WHY they are doing it or how it should come into play.

I was taught in a carbine class to look both ways after the last shot too. But honestly, the last thing I'd ever do is stand there after firing my weapon. If there were other threats they'd know where I was standing just from the sound. I guarantee you that in a real firefight, if I had to shoot someone, I'm gonna get outa dodge and leave a smoke trail behind me. Maybe I'll seek the nearest cover to scan for additional threats, but most likely I'll keep moving until I begin to feel safe...and I might not feel safe until I'm home.

So bruh, you saying you don't train like you fight?! Huh bruh?! You always need to be operator as fuk