Picture, Ken Hackathorn
by ToddG
Hackathorn’s Law: under stress you won’t try to do anything
you’re not confident you can accomplish.
Lately I’ve seen quite a few discussion about sighted vs.
unsighted fire both at pistol-forum.com and on Ballistic Radio‘s Face
Book page. And like so many internet discussions it seems to devolve into an
all or nothing binary only my way works debate.
Coincidentally, last week
I was talking to Ken Hackathorn about sighted vs. unsighted fire. Ken, as anyone could tell you,
is an absolute tyrant when it comes to accuracy. That’s me in the red at
Hackathorn class in 2009. Ken stresses accuracy above all else in terms of
technical shooting skills.
So why does Ken have everyone tape
over their sights during a major part of his
class when students have to hit multiple targets while shooting
on the move? That’s a question worth exploring, and one that gets back to the
problem of seeing (pardon the pun) sighted and unsighted fire as two extreme
and mutually exclusive skills.
Unsighted fire doesn’t have to mean you’re shooting with your
eyes closed. It doesn’t have to mean hip shooting. It simply means you’re
not focused on the front
sight. The gun can still be up in front of your face providing a
reference — both visual and kinesthetic — of where the muzzle is pointed. Let’s
face it, even if your eyes are closed, the gun is still pointed somewhere. As
people learn quickly during Ken’s drill, you can still get pretty good torso
shots while moving even if you aren’t using the little bumpy things atop your
pistol.
So, that brings us to the 800# gorilla in the room: most people won’t focus on their sights under stress. It’s something we all know (often from personal experience
simply doing stressful practice drills) but many “serious” shooters want to
ignore. We’ve all been taught “front sight, trigger press” as a mantra and it’s
essentially a sin to do otherwise.
Reality, however, is different. Many folks simply don’t want to
accept it.
“So,” the
unsighted fire advocates ask, “why
bother practicing with your sights in the first place?”
There are two main reasons. They’re both pretty obvious once you
think about it for a little while.
First, there’s the kinesthetic benefit. The more you practice
putting the gun in the right spot in front of your face, the more natural it
becomes. Your brain and nervous system literally start building connections
that turn that practice into habit until it becomes preconscious. Even
with your eyes locked onto the target, the gun appears right there in line with
your eyeballs because that’s what you’ve practiced time and time again. You may
still be focusing on the target but you’ve gone through the motions so many
times that you’re still putting the gun where it needs to be and, ideally,
you’re still aware of the gun’s position to some extent or another.
Second
and most importantly, the only way you will ever reach the point where
you can see the sights under stress is if you practice it. There was a
long time between when I thought I was using my sights in force-on-force scenarios and when I
actually saw my sights consistently. Since then, I’ve been very conscious of my
sights in FOF training (and just as conscious the times I
screwed up and didn’t use them). My performance in terms of being able to
maneuver and get hits on a moving target improved dramatically, as did my
ability to get good hits from awkward impromptu positions behind cover.
So there are three takeaways from this:
- Unsighted fire
happens, and more often than we often like to admit.
- Practicing
sighted fire helps improve your shooting ability even if you don’t focus
on your sights under extreme stress.
- Practicing
sighted fire diligently can maximize your potential to see and use those
sights under extreme stress.
As I’ve said many times in class, practicing sighted fire will improve your unsighted fire, but it
doesn’t work the other way around.
Train hard & stay
safe! ToddG
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