Roger Phillips

It is a well documented fact that the vast majority of gunfights happen in low light situations. Obviously, the criminal element prefers to operate under the cloak of darkness. It is also pretty well documented on how much more difficult it is to get to your sights while fighting at night. Even with the advent of night sights and the usage of a flash light, having the ability to point shoot is still an absolute must in my eyes.

 Night sights have severe limitations. The most obvious (at least to me) is that they have to be at “line of sight.” This is a very important point! The necessity to be at line of sight while the brain is starving for the visual input of the entire encounter, due to darkness, can be very detrimental. Having the ability to work “below line of sight” becomes even more important during low light situations, than during the day. This is obvious due the lack of visual input that can be taken in during low light situations. To further hinder this lack of visual input by having the gun up in your face can be very counter productive. Read the rest of this entry »

This concept originates with Brian Enos inside of the competition circles. The first time I saw it used was back in late 2002 in Gabe’s excellent article under the same name. Basically, what Gabe was saying is “do not freeze it or label it, just see what you need to see.” This was Gabe’s answer to the sighted fire-vs.-point shooting debate. This article led to my realization that I actually point shot even thought I was trained to hate point shooting and point shooters. That one article with the one title “See What You Need to See” changed my whole world.

Along with the obvious credit to my awakening, there is much more to it than just that. As I began exploring what I was already doing and what guys like Gabe, 7677, and Matt Temkin were talking about on the forums, I began to pay attention to exactly what I was seeing. I immediately saw that when I wanted or needed speed, that I was taking in less visual input on the gun. This was already happening in my Modern Techniques course. I went from hard focus on the front sight, to a crisp sight picture, to a flash sight picture, to aligning down the slide while being target focused. These visual input changes were all done depending on the urgency of the shot to beat the timer. Aligning down the slide was something that I just naturally progressed into. I went years without admitting that I did this because I was taught that point shooting was a fallacy and extremely inaccurate. I later found that almost every single person that I trained with was keeping the exact same secret. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of my students already have substantial sighted fire skills when they come to me. My job is to help them integrate their sight focus skills with their target focus skills. Since confidence is such a key factor to accurate target focus shooing, I like to start them out with what they already know and move them along incrementally from there.

I start them with a one hole drill. The idea is to put five shots through one hole at five yards. This drill re-enforces the necessity for sighted fire skills for precision shots. Hard focus on the front sight, perfect sight alignment, perfect sight picture, excellent trigger control, and follow through is the goal. This also establishes their baseline marksmanship skill level. Read the rest of this entry »

I feel that it is very important to be able to make accurate hits all the way through your draw stroke….whether that be one handed or two. For those that are just starting out, I prefer to teach two handed first because those are the skills that they usually show up to my course with. When I speak of “all the way through,” that is exactly what I mean……at every single point of the draw stroke, due to the fact that it is a continuum. This requires that we try not to freeze or label the points, but we simply have to do this if we are actually going to discuss it with the written word. Also, while these are only points in the draw stroke, they are also shooting positions….positions that are dictated by the specifics of the situation that you are dealing with.

The points that I teach in my course are as follows.

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I just finished running a private course this weekend. It was a combination day/night course integrating techniques, skills, and tactics  that you find inside of the Fight Continuum. There is heavy emphasis the “Reactionary Gunfighting.” The course ran two days/nights from 3:00 PM to 10:00 PM and the round count was 2250 rounds.

In the night portion of the course there was a heavy emphasis of Threat Identification. I integrated a number of drills that required the the ID be made and the threat engaged in an opropriate manner, with live fire. These drills were run under many varying lighting conditions ranging from ambient light, low light, back lite, use of the flash light, and no light.

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Force on force has proven the need to step outside of the box and outside of ones personal comfort zone while training. To repeat ego based marksmanship courses over and over is no longer an adequate path and simply makes no sense. The availability of airsoft guns to the general public has affected a paradigm shift on the gun training community.

When we look at the learning progression we see the symbiotic relationship between live fire and force on force training. The two go hand in hand and one is very limited without the other. The first step of the learning progression is to learn the fundamentals with live fire. The second step is to take those fundamentals into force on force to find out if those fundamentals will get the job done. This is the point that you find out what works and what doesn’t work.

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The very easiest way to understand the need for below line of sight would be from the “contact ready.” The contact ready is a position where you have a very likely threat but the ID has not been made well enough to shoot yet. This would mostly be a LEO ready, but will easily show the need for below line of sight for everyone.

Give this a try.

Unload your gun and double check that it is unloaded. Stand one yard from a mirror and point in at your reflection, at line of sight. This gives you two yards from your reflection. Notice that your hands and gun block the view of the adversary’s waist band and possibly the hands. Obviously, this is very bad!

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