Explaining our Vision for Firearms Training

Hello, All! Edward Lange here. I'm the CEO and Lead Instructor of Field and Hearth. I want to take a second and explain what I've seen in the firearms training industry and explain why I started Field and Hearth to take a different approach. To keep it brief, I'll write it in installments. I hope you find it useful and stay tuned!!

People come to shooting for all sorts of reasons. A fair portion are curious about guns because they love action movies and want to experience shooting in real life. Others are drawn to firearms because of concerns about self defense. Another group of people love the physics and math understanding it takes to shoot long distance rifles. There are a million and one reasons people are drawn to different aspects of the shooting arts but everyone who pursues this passion with any success learns one thing: The public perception of what it means to shoot well and the reality are worlds apart and that disconnect fosters a lot of myths about firearms that good students and instructors learn to watch out for.

Here is the first myth: because somewhat shoots a lot, they become a good shooter. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Shooting is a perishable skill, it's nothing like riding a bicycle, and learning to perform six different things at the same time... that takes constant practice and adaptability. So practice is important but the right kind of practice with objective measurements and a willingness to change established patterns is what makes a great shooter.

There is an intellectual component of shooting. A basics of the art sort of thing called "The Elements of Marksmanship" that we train people in during our beginning classes but no amount of rationalizing shooting will make your hands and mind do what is needed. So practice is key but practicing specific skills building exercises towards a measurable outcome, i.e. hitting a specifically sized targets in a given amount of time and improving, is crucial. Just showing up to the range and popping shots at a paper target, even if you're hitting the center ring consistently, isn't making you a well rounded shooter that can perform under stress. That's why I like to say there are three general modalities of training we focus on at Field and Hearth: marksmanship, speed, and movement. I'm sure you can imagine, these three aspects require different and varied training environments.

So varying our training environment is important. Patterning correct techniques taken from a variety of sources, tested through practice and measurement, and driven into our hands and bodies by repetition is how we become better shooters. Relying on someone elses "experience", unless they can demonstrate the technique and explain it to the student in a way that leads to a quantifiable improvement in their shooting, just isn't worth much. Which leads me to the next myth inexperienced shooters fall prey to: machismo and oversimplification.

Sadly the gun industry is full of egos. Many schools push lots of made up latin phrases in a search to borrow authenticity from military or police culture. Here's the myth though: the military and police don't have the best shooters and for some fairly obvious reasons once you get past the over simplifications and machismo.

The military and police have different but very team oriented tactical situations to deal with. The military in particular is in the business of overmatch. Their side losses, our side wins for minimal loss of life type thinking. It works really well when your infantry unit is backed by a whole host of differently able auxillaries like artillery, air support, drones, missiles, satellites, ect. You find the enemy, engage the enemy, pin him down and overwhelm them with superior fire power, that means something much bigger than a pistol or rifle.

A pistol, in particular, is issued to people in the military that aren't expected to fight with it as their primary weapon. An officer or an MP might carry a pistol but they're not front line soldiers and shouldn't be doing that much shooting. So why would you expect someone with military experience to be a great pistol shooter when it's an inferior weapon in their line of work? I am of course speaking in generalities here. There are great pistol shooters in the military, but it's generally not common and it's not because a pistol was their go-to option.

Even if we change the weapon to a rifle, the person with military experience has been taught group tactics, because group tactics have a higher likelihood of success when available. The average civilian doesn't have a team, sadly. If someone goes crashing through my sliding glass door in the night it's just me and my wife. So door-kicking tactics that evolved over the last 25 years of the war on terror with teams of infantry units might have some application, but as not as much as people generally assume.

As a veteran myself, none if this is intended to disrespect our military or their skills. I'm outlining how their skills are different because the general public is often pulled into overly expensive courses with a trainer who's experience doesn't relate to the students' situation. The course itself may not lead the student to ask questions about relevance, application, or objectivity. When you pay good money for a course, you should ask for and receive these things.

The same is true of police, although they do use pistols more often. People tend to think that most cops are great shots because of t.v. shows. The truth is far from it. The average accuracy of a police officer with iron sighted pistols in a recent study of officer involved shootings was 30%. That's not great but it should be expected from people whose real day job doesn't involve practicing shooting most of the time.

A cop has a hard job with a lot of overtime and we should respect the good ones. There are tickets to write, court cases to go to, investigations, meetings, ect. Most of the retired police officers I've met never shot someone in their entire careers and we should all be happy about that. They were so busy in their regular duties, they didn't have time to devote a weekly practice to shooting. They were often lucky to hit the range once a month.

So if we shouldn't expect the military or cops to be our guides, who are the best shooters and how do we learn from them? The answer is competitive shooters of all stripes. Be it long range rifle, pistol, or shotgun; professional competitive shooters usually outclass the military or police because of an almost exclusive focus on shooting. There are police and military member in the competitive shooting world but they're usually there because they want to be really good shooters not the other way around.

So it may seem a little hypocritical for a guy with a U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement background, who's certifications mostly come from California's Police Officer Standards of Training (P.O.S.T.) trainings to say that we shouldn't over value the military or police shooting experience but it's just observable facts. I've recieved a lot of valuable information in my POST courses and a lot of it comes from the competitive shooting world that was later integrated into the police world. So I pass that experience onto my students to help make their traing efficient and productive.

As a civilian the best way to learn how to shoot for self defense is start with the basics of marksmanship, learn accuracy, build speed, and then study efficient movement with firearms. For that, the civilian shooter is going to have to join the competition world because the average shooting range available in the bay area won't let them practice these techniques outside of the tightly controlled competition environment. I would also add that a good shooter knows how to deal with the adrenal response involved in self defense and you just don't get that from shooting paper targets. Blasting paper targets at the local shooting range is a great way to build accuracy when proper techniques are followed, but it's pretty poor training ground for speed because the target is right in front of you, and has zero elements of tactical movement. The closest approximation to the levels of self control required for self defense shooting is approximating it within the competitive environment regularly. And to do anything regularly, we have to make it fun!!

More about how we do that in the next blog. Thanks for reading and being part of our community!

-Edward Lange