Originally posted by Tim Mulverhill:
Do you want the first time you send a round into a target(threat) in close proximity to another person to be in a training class/controlled environment or at the 7-11 when the badguy has his arm around your wife's neck? It can be an extremely steep learning curve for those who choose the latter.

If you train to use your gun in the 360 degree range we call the world, you better be prepared to shoot around the good guys. If not, sell your gun on Gunbroker and carry a can of pepper spray.

I have complete faith in the students we have instructed to stand forward of their muzzles, and the responsibility as their instructor to have them leave our range fully confident to perform what we have taught them off of the range in a dynamic environment full of moving/screaming 'no-shoots'.

I now find it difficult to operate at facilities slavishly committed to the 180 and feel that I am somehow being treated like an incompetent or child, and that the curriculum is lacking or incomplete.

The 180 is another range rule, not a rule of safe gunhandling. Not pointing your gun at something you are not willing to destroy is an example of safe gunhandling, and if your instructor is 3 feet to the side of your target, engage your target without pointing it at him. If you are incapable of performing this simple task, then you shouldn't be handling guns on any range.


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TRAINING:
GEAR:

My first day of FP was my third day ever on a firing range, and my second day ever of focusing on the use of a pistol.

By the time Jay had gotten tired of taking pictures of the ladies in the class and had worked his way down to take pictures of me, I was tired, shaken up, and my hands were aching, but I was putting bullets where they needed to go. It just so happened, however, that that particular drill involved starting to shoot from your back, then moving to a sitting, then kneeling, then standing position, while shooting at each of those stages. I knew that I probably wasn't going to hit Jay, but I also knew that sometimes my right knee doesn't cooperate with me, that I had been called out once for having a careless finger on the trigger between drills, and that I had a tendency to jump a little bit when the person next to me fired their weapon. All in all, I wasn't comfortable shooting with Jay there for that particular drill.

So I didn't fire my weapon.

It was as easy as that. I knew that I didn't have to pull the trigger in that instance, so I did not. If I had to do it again, I would almost certainly complete the drill, as I feel more comfortable with pistols now than I did that day (having had a lot of things in my head go "click" on Day 2 of the class). And yes, I know that in some respects I did myself a disservice by not having that kind of real-world "there's a guy right there next to my target!" training, but I had to respect the fact that the freedoms and latitude given to me by the Tactical Response instructors are constrained first and most importantly by my own judgment. The gun was in my hands and nobody else's.

More than you trust Jay's judgment, you have to trust the judgment of the shooter. And if you trust them enough to not kill you in the first place, it shouldn't really matter where anybody stands.