I practice shooting from the kneeling position. You never know, you may be in a situation were you can kneel behind cover. It could come in handy sometime.

It can be very handy if you have to shoot over something.  Just stack your bones like you would for a rifle, remember to not rest your elbow directly on your knee as it's unstable as heck.  Rest it in front of your kneecap.  If there is an objest you're shooting over, then use that as a rest instead of actually assuming a conventional kneeling postion.

The squat can be assumed quite quickly, but you can almost get into a sitting positon just as fast and gain a great deal more stability.  

I don't know how much to worry about the ricochets.  I would think any position that actually presents a smaller target profile to bullets that are flying is a better deal.

Long shots can happen depending on what's going on.  I can hit a 2 liter soda bottle at 100yds with my Remington-Rand USGI .45 M1911 2 out of 3 times.  That's close enough to suppress anybody out there.  I've seen people shoot a man sized target at 100yds with a 2" snubbie with half the rounds making solid hits.  They may not have much power, but anybody out there bothering you with a rifle will be thinking twice about standing up!

Ross

IMHO kneeling is a very important position to practice and become proficient at.  
It allows you to assume a stable position and use a lot of typical cover or concealment.  I.E. - using the engine/front wheel of some cars and shooting around the front end ( as opposed to over the hood) and still be able to return to your feet quickly if you need to move.

Gotta go with BeachBoy on this one.  Great position to work on.  Practice prone, too, so you can use a gutter for cover.  Just don't rest the pistol or your hands on the deck.  Rollover prone is good for  this, too.

I've been tought to get accustomed/use various shooting positions beginning with a plain weaver-like stance all the way down to lying flat on your back with your head facing the targets. Talking about odd.
But the kneeling position is definitely a must learn position in my book and one of the basics we teach the guys in our unit (check previous replies for why it's a good position).

C-2-6 Out!

I have a question for you guys, since you all sound like Police Officers and train a lot.
I went out to practice with my G19 this evening and decided to do most of my shooting from 25 yards out instead of the usual 50ft and in.
I seemed to group my shots in the center of mass area on my target much better after shooting a the longer range first.
So my question is,would you guys recommend I do most of my practice at 25 out to 50 yards?
My thinking is that shooting at the longer ranges will make the shorter ranges easier.
I took a basic handgun defense course last year and all of our shooting was 50 ft tops.
Any thoughts and recommendations would be appreciated as all of my practice is by myself.(rural area).
Thanks,  Lee

Lee,
Actually you need to develop a whole range of skills from contact distance out to 50 or even 100 yards from a variety of positions.
What you witnessed today is an example of how concentrating on your marksmanship at a longer range makes the closer shots seem easier.
When I start with a new shooter, I always start them at about 10 to 15 FEET (3 to 5 yards) from the target, so they can work on getting small groups in the beginning, which helps to build confidence in their basic skill.  Then as their ability increase, so does the distance.
But there are also skills/techniques to learn such as shooting with only a flash sight picture, shooting from an unbalanced or difficult position, multiple targets, etc., way too much to try and describe in this post.
Shooting is in one way like golf.  You need a whole bag of special tools (skills) to play (shoot) with confidence over a variety of ranges and scenairos.
So I encourage you to keep pushing the envelope and learn as much as you can.  Try and find someone else to shoot with, so they can watch you while you shoot to help correct mistakes, plus it puts a little performance pressure on both shooters.

Thanks Beachboy, In the course I took we did do a lot of what you decribed as far as contact out to 50ft along with sevearl weapons failure drills such as fail to fire, fail to extract and so on.
It is much to easy to just stand there on my hind legs and fire away and not think about trying differant poasitions, but I did try shooting kneeling from 40 yrds from the corner of a building tonight.
As far as getting good groups at close range, I have been shooting for a number of years with the last 2 primarily on combat shooting.
I tried the longer shots for more of a challenge and to improve my skills since I think I really need to be able to make solid hits at 50 yards most of the time
None of my shooting friends are serious about learning combat techniques and I would have to travel a ways to find any competition shooting, but I know what you mean by the competitive value(iron sharpens iron).
One more question for you guys if I may.
Are any of the gun magazines worth a darn with their training and scenario articles?
Some of them seem to just want to suck a guy in with their cover story titles.
I quit buying them after I accidentally paid $8 for one at the grocery checkout. What a rip off!!

Thanks again.  Lee

Yeah, you can learn from those articles, but only so much.  It's not like you're going to be in that EXACT situation and everything is going to fall EXACTLY the same.  That's the whole point of training.  It's to give you a base that you can draw on to make judgments and take action.  It also gets the mechanics of shooting out of the way in that it makes you more automatic in that respect.  That leaves you better able to deal with the developing situation, rather than trying to remeber how to assume the perfect Weaver stance.  

If you read those articles and figure out what they're really telling you, i.e. what the mistakes were, then you may be better able to avoid the mistakes of others.  Of course you'll have your own mistakes to make, but you'll probably do that easy enoughhave
Ross