About 30 years ago I went through a defensive pistol course in the Army, it was part of a close quarters combat training. The instructor was an old E8 from the Viet Nam era, his first words to us was "In a heated situation the most useless piece of equipment you have is sights on a pistol!". He had sheets of notebook paper taped randomly all over the wall in front of us with numbers on them. He told us the first exercise would be simple, he would call out a number and everybody point to the piece of paper with that number. We spent about an hour just pointing at pieces of paper on the wall everytime he called out a number

He explained to us the ability to point at an object your eyes are looking at is a natural instinct. He then let us practice with a rubber pistol, he told us to think of the pistol as an extension of our finger and point it like you did your finger. After a while of him calling out numbers and pointing a rubber gun he then told us to try and aim the gun at the paper when he called out a number. After just a few minuets we all realized how much it slowed us down trying to find the target with your eyes and then finding the sights. He trained us on the range with this point method bringing the pistol up to shoulder level and engaging multiple targets in a moving situation and I got to say shooting pop up targets (man sized silhouettes) I found it very easy to walk right through hitting every target that popped up almost instantly as it came up.

He told us it had been his experience in a situation where you face multiple moving targets trying to kill you, taking time to aim not only slows you down on engaging those targets but having your hands and pistol at eye level trying to use the sights blocks a considerable amount of your field of view making it almost impossible to follow moving targets.

I have been through many classes since then and I have never had anyone else use his training methods. Still to this day I practice this method with all my carry weapons. I thought I would share this to see if anyone else has ever trained this way?  

Good luck point shooting at 25 yards.

Although matches are not combat, they do result in an objective score...hits and time.  If point shooting was the be-all/end-all you'd see it winning matches.

In reality, circumstances dictate what to do.  You need a perfect sight picture and trigger pull/press/squeeze to connect at 100 yds with a pistol.  At 25 yds sights are better than point and shoot for me.  At 5 yds a vague awareness of the target and indexing will get hits.

The more one shoots, the more you see, and the more you know what you need to see to make the shot.  In point shooting practice I have found that it is hard not to see the sights and that I need to tape over them or I'll find myself "cheating."  If you can cheat with your sights at speed, do it.

IBCAR (In Before Center Axis Relock)

This type training is not meant to be a one size fits all cure. Most defensive situations happen at very close range and happen very quickly. In the military a sidearm was considered to be a defensive weapon, strictly a close range weapon. Anyone who carries a sidearm (concealed or open) should consider it a defensive weapon also. While training proper stance, proper hold, proper sight picture, breathing, reloading and accuracy are all very important, that type training doesn't always cover real world situations and many of those situations happen so fast and at feet not yards that most people will never have time to get a pistol up and acquire a sight picture.

The fundamentals of shooting apply in every situation at every distance, except contact distance.  

If that's your assertion, then OK.


Even then I could see an argument to be made that contact shooting still requires some sort of index to the target, even if that index is just spatial awareness of angles and trajectory or actually physically placing the muzzle on the target you intend to shoot.  


The important variable here, IMO, is distance.  The closer a target, the less precise your sight picture has to be (or conceivably, no sight picture at all).  Conversely, the farther a target, the more precise your sight picture has to be.  


There may be a proper place for point shooting in one's training, but the best training IMO is to KNOW for any given distance what an acceptable sight picture looks like to get your hits.  Obviously this requires using your sights.  


We don't get to choose the parameters and the scenario in a defensive situation.  So the best thing one can do is to train for all of them.  Exclusively training point shooting is a mistake.

Interesting post.  Basically, your old instructor was correct.  I am currently reading a very interesting 2006 FBI study, “Violent Encounters”.  This study goes into considerable depth examining every aspect of exactly why so many police officers end up on the losing end of gunfights with criminals.  The conclusions are very disturbing.
This is a long report and I cannot summarize it here, but I can point out a few of the findings.

Many of us have remarked about the “goofy”, “gangsta’” fighting style of street hoodlums.  We all know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout; the point and blast, hit and run style, the “undisciplined” shooting; no sights, incorrect hold, etc., etc.  Well guess what?  Although ugly, it WORKS!  And the proof is all the police officers (and opposing gang members) who end up in the hospital and in the cemeteries each year.

The simple and disquieting fact is, the street thugs are using an effective technique and are instinctively getting some VERY important things exactly CORRECT.  The most important thing they are getting right is that they KEEP MOVING.  They shoot from the run.  The other thing they are getting right is that they GET IN CLOSE at the apex of their attack…and then they GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE.  The next thing they are doing is “spray & pray”.  Now right here we have a BIG issue.  Spray & pray is very effective at close range, BUT ONLY if you do not give a rat’s ass about accountability for your shot placement.

Right here is why street criminals have an advantage.  They are not the least bit worried about how a jury is going to judge their actions and they couldn’t care less about “collateral damage”.    Civilian CCW holders and police officers do not have this luxury.

I hate to say it, but the FBI report makes it very clear, as in CRYSTAL, that an uncomfortably high percentage of street thugs have both MORE EXPERIENCE in gunfighting and BETTER TACTICS than police officers or civilians who practice only on a square firing range.

The fix is to get get police more training and repetitions.  In Jim Cirillo's books, he recounts how he saw his sights everytime.  He was a firearms instructor and competition shooter before going to the Stake Out Squad.  Training!

Better training will help a bit, but only up to a point.  Police training HAS been getting better, but over the past twenty years or so, police mortality from lethal force encounters with offenders has remained frustratingly constant.

The central problem is the simple fact that police officers (and this applies also to ccw holding civilians) are REACTING to an attack that has already begun.  In other words, police officers/ccw holders DO NOT HAVE THE INITIATIVE.  This can very easily turn out to be fatal.

OTOH, police cannot be preemptive either.  Look at what just happened in Tulsa, where a police officer who probably acted prudently, is now up on manslaughter charges.

Here’s a stat from the FBI report.  Average target to distance range for offender and his victim is usually less than 15 yards.  Average engagement range for an officer’s return fire toward his attacker is 25 yards (the attacker has already initiated his retreat well before he is under fire).  Add to this the fact that by the time an officer returns fire, he is probably already impaired from bullet wounds and this helps explain the hit probability for the officer of only about 39% (using AIMED FIRE), while the hit probability for the offender is closer to 70%.

This is grim stuff.

Everything you just pointed can be made better through better training.  Departments that focus more on training have better hit ratios and survival rates.  Training not only includes the use of firearms, but also interaction with suspects (how to react and how to take initiative).  The better trained an officer is, the more confident they are, the more confident they are, the less likely they are to make mistakes, because they've been trained correctly.  

Those old 1911 didnt have sights anyways

I'm not tying to start a pissing match here.  And I do not disagree with everything you are saying, but the FBI findings indicate otherwise.

It turns out, that the more experienced officers actually suffer higher mortality form lethal interactions with violent offenders.  The primary reason?....complacency, and over confidence in their ability to deal with the situation due to their high level of experience.  They are more inclined to take risks and to operate under unfounded assumptions (based upon their experience).

The less experienced officers are more likely to stick more closely "to the book" (and to their training).

And there are other factors, too.  A tendency to try to put in too much overtime and become too fatigued to be as safe as possible on the job.  So, this means that there are administrative issues that need to be addressed as well.

All of us operate this way over time because it's human nature to become confident and complacent with experience.

sign up for a local USPSA-IPSC match

cover your front & rear sights with masking tape

tell us how you do  







OMFG it's a texas star

The FBI findings do NOT indicate otherwise.  In fact, the more "experienced" officers are the ones who need MORE training.  Daily in-service training only takes a few minutes.  Again, training is the answer.  Top Military and TOP Law Enforcement agencies that train often have way better results in deadly encounters.  It's not conjecture, it's fact.  If it were, Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, FBI HRT, LAPT SWAT, NYPD ESU would stop their normal training and conduct more constructive ventures.

OP  There are many variations of how a handgun can be sighted or aligned with a target.  When you might do depends upon the situation and your training.  The best person I know on this topic is Roger Phillips who has Fight Focused Concepts.  I recommend you read his articles.

It can useful in certain situations and is something to put into your repertoire, but it's a crutch for not being able to present the gun cleanly with proper sight alignment.

I've seen complete misses on targets while point shooting at distances just out of arms reach.


Even a hint of the front sight with a flash sight picture is better than nothing at all.

If you really want to understand the issue, shoot USPSA. There is no better way to learn how much sight picture, pace, shooting position, and distance matter and relate to one another.

Even at very close range though, there will be some degree of sight awareness.

While the discussion has gotten way over my head I do want to thank the original poster for bringing up the "point and shoot" training. I was taught that technique in advanced infantry training before going to Vietnam in 1968.
In the past few years I've taken some handgun courses and when I described that technique to the instructors they just gave me a strange look. Especially when I said we were hitting nickels thrown in the air with BB guns consistently.
I agree that it probably not applicable to a self defense application. But I enjoyed hearing about it again since I was beginning to think I imagined the whole thing.

+1

I've watched Chris Costa put 2 rounds on a full silhouette at 50 yards with sights taped over. You can get a pretty good idea just using the slide of the gun. I have seen a video flying around where some old Russian guy can hit steel from the hip with a pistol while walking. Point shooting works, and is easy to do, but getting really good at it requires lots of practice.

You know what you could do with all that time and ammo spent on point shooting practice?

Learn to use the sights.

Learn and practice both point shooting and using your sights.

They both have their place in the fight.

A few years ago I purchased a training video that suggested the training methods of the original post and I agree that training both ways is smart and effective.  As mentioned, both have their place.

The way that I was taught point shooting, is as an after-effect of proper training in fundamentals; i.e. proper sight alignment/sight picture. Kind of like a mental short-cut. If the fundamentals are cemented into your training, of course you will see your sights when you fire, even if you're not consciously "using" them.

We were taught to adjust our grip so that when we point our lead thumb, the sights would be properly aligned. If they weren't, we moved the gun (within reason; there were some guys with really weirdly-shaped hands) until they did. Once that grip became habit, point shooting became a valid option for close quarters engagement.

That being said, we also learned that the target will determine how they are engaged. The farther the target, the more focused the fundamentals.

Necessary sight picture is situationally dependent. NRA PPITH and Brian Enos in Beyond Fundamentals both cover this subject very well. It's basic physics: provided everything is working properly, if your sights are aligned on the target then your bullet will strike your target whether or not you ever see the sights. (What you SEE is irrelevant. It's what is HAPPENING that is relevant.) Using a precision sight picture is generally the best way to achieve the highest relative accuracy. Pointing the gun in the general direction of the target is generally the fastest way to send a bullet in the general direction of the target. It is up to the shooter to determine what level of accuracy is required to make the shot in the required time. A head shot at 25 yards is a totally different shot than a torso shot at 5 feet. Both of these types of shots reveal themselves in both IPSC matches and in real-life. At 5 feet a standard IPSC torso is huge - I don't even think about using my sights. Using sights at that distance may even be counterproductive to accuracy because the sights need a target reference to work. Whether or not you realize it, when you aim using sights you are referencing the sights to the edges of the target area. If you are so close to the target that you cannot see all of the edges at once then you cannot properly reference the sights.

I believe in the NRA curriculum that I teach in classes and the BSA rule says this:

If the shot fails to strike the target with sufficient accuracy then it is a failed shot. If the shot fails to strike the target in the required time then it is a failed shot.

Point shooting can fail to deliver the required accuracy. Precision fire can fail to deliver the required speed. It is the shooter's responsibility to make the determination regarding what he needs to do to satisfy BSA.