I'm kind of a history nerd and from what research I've done, the point shooting style taught by Skykes/Fairburn had been carried over to the States during WWII. They seemed to do some testing and the results at close range were pretty favorable. Now this could have been done due to the fact that the sights on the M1911A1's were ridiculously small and modern guns have improved, but I still feel like there was some pretty good rational to teaching new shooters with a VERY limited time to learn. What I've not been able to find out is what happened afterwards. It seems like in the gap between the 40's and 60's they started emphasizing using the sights more with the exception of the FBI's revolver methods which involved firing from the hip with a locked wrist.

Anyways, long winded I know, but is point shooting still taught? In my mind, I think that it still makes a lot of sense and some of the old timers could probably attest to it. Not saying we should dump everything we've learned since then, just curious why it isn't taught anymore. At least a little couldn't hurt right?

Louis Awerbuck taught it. Certainly, others are teaching it too. Firing from retention is point and or index shooting.

It's good for helping to create distance.

Competition has taught us that the best way to get consistent hits quickly is to use your sights.  If point shooting could win matches, folks would flock to it.  It is still taught as a method to be used when you can't use your sights for whatever reason.

OP  Look up the website by Roger Phillips  Fight Focused Concepts.   He teaches things which some people think are not even possible.

I don't think you can overstate the role of shooting games towards "tactical" training.

Change the rules of some popular games, see new things get emphasized in real world training.

Shooting from retention, drawing from a seated position, etc. get less attention because they aren't part of any popular games.

But old school point shooting doesn't appear to offer benefits to current methods beyond hand to hand range. With enough high speed mid range scenarios in game environments, where the old school point shooting was supposed to excel, maybe it will prove itself.

Frankly I doubt it. Some of the IDPA targets are awful close and easy to hit, and nobody seems to see an advantage to not going to full extension and getting a flash sight picture. Perhaps the muscle memory, habit element plays as much as a role as anything else.

I've point shot targets at USPSA matches before.

One stage required you to hang on to a rope and lean out past a barricade to even be able to see the targets, both to the left and right sides.  Targets were close enough and the position awkward enough I just shot them Billy the Kid style.  Two alpha each.

Another stage had you engaging targets behind a low wall, the targets were inclined a little, but nearly horizontal in orientation.  It was a contortion to lean forward far enough over the fault line to be able to line up the sights, so I just stretched my hand over the wall, cocked my wrist down and blasted them.

I've also had some short range (blow the pasters off range!) starting targets that were placed at the start of the stage just to get an idea of match draw times vs practice draw times. I mean, everyone can pull a .68 to an alpha at 7 yds in practice, right?  I didn't even look at the first target as I was concentrating on the next one and getting moving out of the box.

So point shooting is useful on occasion, but generally there is no compelling reason not to use your sights.

IPSC and IDPA realism could be enhanced by having people shooting back with live ammo.

Not that it would ever happen.

I took a course on it. It was a short 4 hour course "Point vs Precision" at Sig Academy. I wanted to take their 2 day "Reflexive Shooting" course but couldn't manage the time when I lived near there. It was also stressed during their "Shooting on the move" and their "Close Quarters Shooting" courses. It's my understanding that some other instructors teach it as well.
I think it's a valid technique and the principals of it should at least be understood by all people that carry a gun for self-defense.
Statistically it's said that most people don't use their sights on the 2-way range - even the trained people, so that means they point or reflexively shoot. Why not have practiced that way if that's what a person is likely to do when under life or death pressure?

I do shoot using my sights and practice that too - I just do both.

Cheers!
-JC

Cooper's wise "Accuracy-Power-Speed."  

In every gunfight there's an optimum intersection -- sacrifice one for another and you lose.

My opinion only:  Point shooting is useful for a particular distance and stance and requires a lot of practice.  Make changes, such as having to lean around cover, moving, increase the distance or have the target partially behind cover, the practice is for naught.  

If you know how your gunfight is going to unfold, practice it beforehand and point shooting might work.  If you don't have the foresight to know what's going to happen, practice with your sights at anything beyond 3 yards.

I took a course last year on super close quarters, mostly within arms reach.  The majority of shooting was point shooting, but ot be fair the class was as much about fighting, pistol retention and crating space as it was shooting.  The round count was low for a full day class 200ish IIRC.  I think at the distances that point shooting is generally effective it's also semi instinctual.  Th biggest thing is a bit of practice positioning the gun to keep it functional and safe for you.  

I think a lot of the reason sights are emphasized has a much to do with legality as with function.  Sure you can make hits  in an 8x11 paper at 10, 15 maybe even 20 feet on a stress free range.  I think we can all agree that at 15-20 feet were more accurate with sights and using them even if it's just a "flash picture" makes sense.  
So where do you draw the line?  What do you do about misses?  We're responsible for every round fired in the real world.  Most stats/analysis I have read suggests accuracy drops radically, maybe 50% in real world gunfights.  Are you willing to accept that, and just as importantly would you teach it?  

I read an analysis titled something like "what we can learn from gang members" (can't remember a source) that suggested the spray n' pray while moving could be particularly effective.  I've also seen time to engagement stressed by high level shooters like former seal Chris Sajnog as a critical element in who wins the gun fight.  The fact is though that you must be accountable for any collateral damage from stray rounds (and hopefully feel more responsibility than the average gang member). For me this makes point shooting very limited in application.

Motion sensing paintball guns would be slick.

Of course, you'd have to make sure people don't shoot the sentry turret.

At Gunsite once we had a great experience shooting at Tactical Ted mounted five feet over an off road RC car. Then someone shot the goddamn RC car. At 75'. How you doing miss that badly?!

It is all point shooting until it isn't.

The sightsconfirm where you are pointing. When you have a strong index, sights do very little. When you add odd positions, off balance shooting, movement, distance, etc, the sights do more and more.

Practice enough and you find the balance of what sight picture you need. You give up very little speed with sights. Like hundredths of a second. But you gain a lot of accuracy.

Find a proficient shooter and a point shooter and give them any test. My money is on the sights.

As referenced above, if you look at the historical development of point shooting, it was developed  separately from sighted defensive shooting.

I think we've gotten to the point where the use of our sense of proprioception in sighted defensive shooting (getting both) is becoming a recognized method.  Good IDPA and IPSC shooters know exactly how much sight they need for each shot, and their body makes up the rest (via grip and stance).  It works exactly the same from retention positions, only there is no sight use at all.  Similarly, long range handgun shots are highly dependent on sighting, but still require skillful kinesthesia.

Plenty of schools (including ours) still teach point/intuitive fire.

Combative intuitive fire and sighted fire are valid techniques that both have their tactical niche.

Sighted fire takes over where your intuitive fire becomes less effective for the individual shooter.

ECQC is almost all point/indexed shooting. The shooting portion is almost all within a couple of yards, the indexed positions are effective. If I can get a full extension, I will use a flash sight picture and refine it as distance increases.

+1

In my experience, there were two types of shooting: point shooting and aimed fire.

Over the years, graduations were developed and each one got it's own name so you no longer hear the word "point" a lot. Brian Enos' Beyond Fundamentals covers the different sight pictures pretty well. An experienced shooter analyzes the situation and chooses his sight picture accordingly - maybe it's so fast he never uses his sights or just sees the sights on target (but never refines them). NRA PPITH curriculum covers this. As long as everything is in working order, the bullets will go where the sights are pointed whether or not the shooter sees them. A lot of precision shooters get wound around the axle with frustration that we aren't taking the time to make more accurate shots. It would be just as legitimate for me to complain that they are making too precise of shots and that they are not making the time that I would like to see. It's all a matter of perspective. No one is wrong until you add a specific shot scenario into the mix - then the shot needs to be analyzed for what it is. This subject deserves an entire book... and Brian wrote it already. Rob Leatham is getting a little ornery with age and he is starting to leak some seriously gritty wisdom from the many rounds he has launched, so he's worth hearing, too.

My $.02:

When you consistently and correctly apply learned shooting fundamentals using your sights, "point/index/whatever" shooting is almost a natural progression for close-quarters engagements. If you can get a consistent grip, draw, and alignment most of the work is already done. That's where muscle memory (i.e. training) plays a role. You will learn how the pistol feels in your hand, and if it feels like something is off. Flash sight picture is not all that different than point shooting, except you're actually acting out the fundamentals; albeit in a compressed timeframe.

Personally, I relegate pure point shooting to retention scenarios until enough space is created to allow compressed fundamentals. This goes back to allowing your target to determine your engagement.

I think the issue is we are taking about entirely different fundamentals for bringing the weapon on target.

The old point shooting method involved a straight or somewhat straight arm and a raise up vice a push out. The switch to two-handed shooting probably played a role as well. It wasn't all hip shooting, though the same grip techniques were taught for that. There was no talk of a "flash sight picture." Sights were irrelevant.

It's a tool for the toolbox. With practice, knowing what you need to see before pulling the trigger becomes second nature.

Had a conversation with a buddy that works for the local PD a couple years ago and he mentioned that they were taught or trained to "point shoot."  Honestly he could have just been talking about one day of training but I feel like he was referring to how the department was trained in general.

I train to point shoot at certain up close distances. Gut shot from the draw, back up, use both hands now, and align sights and dump two more into the CNS. It's still important to a certain extent.

Fair point. I could add to my other reply that it is still taught, just in a different way due to a better understanding of shooting fundamentals.

When I was on the job, we learned to shoot from retention at the up close and personal distances

Years later when I took a number of defensive handgun courses, we also learned to shoot from retention at close distances.

I'm an NRA Instructor who teaches the Personal Protection classes. The dumbest drill is to shoot 3-6' from the target by extending your arms/gun out all the way. Since most people have a 3' reach, I demonstrate with a Blue Gun the drill as called out in the instructor's manual and ask them "what are you going to do?" Everyone pushes the Blue Gun away. Then I teach them to shoot from retention and we run the live fire drill that way.

When it is a game, you can safely extend and use the sights. When you are training to fight for your life, that is the dumbest thing you can do when you are at "bad breath" distance from the perp. In a crisis you will react as you train, so you better train against paper targets like it was someone with arms that can hurt you or grab your gun!!

Teach it to your own self.

I shoot my blinky joint just a little low right at panic-point-distance.

Ogange speck is "aiming" point.
Close enough.

I don't need no steenkin sights.

Never used the sights or the safety on that one even one time.

+1

A point-shooter is nothing without his NPA - and you'll be hard pressed to develop your NPA without sights.

When someone is attacking you, you'd be hard-pressed to develop your NPA with your sights!!!

Preach!

"When someone is attacking you" is not the time to be developing anything. That's what training is for.

Word

It's like the people who think when the shit hits the fan you will magically  rise to the occasion rather than fall to the level of your training.

I agree. You need to train NPA and shooting from retention (point-shooting) so that in a crisis situation you can react appropriately.

One thing to realize is that in an attack the perp isn't likely to be stationary, so you need to move also and NPA is going to constantly change.

FWIW, I don't think the concept of NPA has much utility in pistol shooting.

I think the common concept we're discussing is more accurately called "index".

Index refers to the ability to draw the gun and have the gun (or sights) appear in precise alignment to the object you're looking at and focusing on.

Index applies whether your target is at 3 feet or 30 yards.

So index is valuable whether you're point shooting or using aimed fire.

A refined index comes from training, which properly should begin with aimed fire.  

Engaging a target at anything more than literal contact distance does require some form of index and alignment, the only difference is the degree of precision required.  At 30 yards, You will need a very precise (maybe perfect) sight picture and a hard front sight focus.  At 3 yards, you will likely only need to see the outline of the gun superimposed on the target in order to make an accurate shot, etc.    

The point is, you MUST know, for any given distance, what you can and can't get away with in the context of aiming in order to fire accurate shots.  This comes only through training and experimentation.  It is folly to rely on point shooting exclusively, just as it would be foolish to get a hard front sight focus at contact distance.  If you think point shooting alone is going to get it done in a high-stress scenario with a moving target (or multiple targets) at variable distances, you are doing yourself a grave disservice.  We need to be ready for any situation, statistics and dogma be damned, lest we become a statistic ourselves.

Indexing is also a product of NPA. When training for fundamentals, one still develops NPA. It is not until one learns his or her proper grip, proper stance, and how they interact; that he or she will develop a proper index. If you don't think pistol shooting has NPA ask a shooter who has medaled in CMP.

I didn't say it doesn't exist, I stated that  it has little utility in the type of shooting we're talking about.  

Hint:  No one gunfights like this:

You are correct, and I did misspeak; mistaking what you said for what I thought you meant. My apologies.

That being said, I also never said that anyone fights with a CMP style of shooting. I merely used them as an example of NPA in pistol shooting.

In all the training I've ever ecountered--military, LE, and private--I've never seen anyone attempt to introduce a novice shooter to pistol combatives without first ensuring they have a solid grasp of the fundamentals. Those fundamentals include NPA, as it pertains to pistol-shooting on known-distance ranges in a non-combative atmosphere. You can't learn proper indexing with an improper grip-alignment. You learn proper grip alignment through establishing NPA.

Edit: If you know of another effective method, I'm all ears (and I don't mean that sarcastically).

Total agreement!

Can you distinguish NPA and Index more clearly? I recognize that a running gunfight is much more dynamic than a High Power 600m Match but I don't understand how I am not using NPA even when I have to sprint 7 yards to Box B to engage the next set of targets.

Whether the target be paper or flesh, I essentially "Index" the target the moment shooting it becomes my primary task. The moment my feet stop moving I establish "NPA" and commence the string. It's fast and dynamic but all of the essential elements are there from my perspective. My "NPA" might even lock on the target if both the target and I are still moving.

I think we fundamentally agree on the concepts but maybe one or both of us are not describing it as precisely as we should.

Here is how I conceptualize the difference:

NPA- Assume your shooting stance and close your eyes, then draw the gun .  Where the gun is pointing is your NPA.

Index- Focus your eyes on a specific point and draw the gun.  The sights should appear in your line of sight in alignment and pointing at the spot at which your eyes are focused.

The difference is in the name.  NPA is what it is, it's naturally where your sights end up based on the way you're standing. 

Index is not natural and doesn't matter how you're standing.  Index is a trained skill.

I think point shooting is useful beyond retention range for a number of reasons.

Mainly, we aren't shooting a 2D piece of paper of cardboard.  It is a person trying to kill us.  At 3yds, if we extend and they extend their arms, they are just 1 step from a gun grab or parry.  That is a fraction of a second.  At 5yds, they are just 3 steps (nevermind Tueller's 21').  

Now, don't get me wrong, I practice sighted fire at 3 and 5 yards all the time as well.  I'm just saying depending on the situation, having practiced a point method that works beyond retention would be good.  It could be shooting from position 3 in the draw stroke (when the hands come together) which is already developed.

Other reasons in no particular order, we talk about how good modern sights are, but how many people carry tiny 380s or snubs with tiny sights?  Under stress we tend to focus on the threat and also our pupils may dilate (not saying you "can't" use your sights, but it could be difficult person and situation dependent).  Finally add in some low light or some awkward shooting positions and an intermediate PS method for the 3-5yd realm makes a lot of sense to me to have trained and be familiar with.

At a minimum, I think everyone should have a well-trained retention position and at least some practice at another like Pos. 3, hip or 3/4 hip (arm about 2/3rds extended).

My personal range envelopes for the different techniques are retention to 2yds.  Hip to 4.  Pos 3; 3-5yds.  3/4 hip; 5-6.  Shoulder point out to 7 and I can hold "A"s at 10yds 2 handed PS.  I usually just practice it at retention range to 5yds though.  And on the move, counter to a poster on pg1, you don't have to be standing in some special way.

One of my favorite drills is to walk holstered in a lazy figure 8 and on the signal draw while moving fast laterally and shoot through the draw stroke, first shot is usually between the hip and 3/4 hip position then shoulder point, then flash front sight head shot.  If the center of your figure 8 is 4 yds, you'll be 3-5 at the signal.  Of course, could do it at contact distance, draw to retention and extend while moving laterally and to the rear as well.

The best way to practice is with airsoft or a laser on your gun at home, then verify live next time you go to the range.

The best way to mitigate retention-distance is to create more of it. There is no reason to train to stay static in a gun fight. Providing a stationary target for your threat can get you killed.

If the threat is three yards away, give some space while you draw. If you feel that five yards is too close, keep moving to provide more space. The 21' "rule" is in place to give time to draw and fire before the threat can reach you. While hip-firing might provide the desired results, the point is that it should not be the first--or only--method of engagement that is taught.

I agree, you better be moving!  

I typically fire 1-2 shots point shooting while moving as I'm extending the gun and transitioning to the sights.

You take what you get and make do the best you can with what you have. There is such a thing as "some" NPA and some NPA may be enough to get the job done. I will not give up the fight on account of not being able to get perfect NPA. That having been said, I dispute the notion that many contend that NPA cannot ever be had in the real world. In my many ghetto misadventures I have always had time to get weapons applied because I was actively watching the actors perform on their stage. Rarely are these attacks not preceded by bawdy theatrics.

Food for thought: I have shot fish with a bow as the fish was swimming and I was still running to get into position to nail him. If I have one toe on the ground then I have some NPA. This is a matter of degrees. If you are waiting for absolutes then you are in for a long wait.

I believe in point shooting but I am realistic about what is actually happening when I do it. There is no magic - it's just my prior training manifesting in one of many forms.

Surprised no one has posted this example of a competition shooter, point shooting accurately...

That's a great example of a highly refined index.  Like 99+ percentile skill.

Some of the people on this forum are at 99+. Taran Butler is adrift in the nether regions of 99.5 to 99.9. He is truly a sight to behold.