Performance Based Principles
High level shooting is the number 1 tactic when regarding use of force with a firearm. All other tactics exist to support your ability to hit what you're aiming at fast enough to be successful within the given time frame of that specific circumstance.
Shooting is Shooting
The fundamentals applied while shooting a firearm do not change based upon the application... Whether you are on the range training with friends or in a gun fight with multiple near peer opponents, the only thing that changes about performing the fundamentals is the stress level and the risk involved; a draw stroke is still just a draw stroke, gripping the gun is still just gripping the gun, aiming strategies to get the hit are still the same… the stakes are just much higher for failure.
So, what level of fundamental skill with a firearm leads to success?
It can’t be defined with a hard line as each OIS has different target distances, target sizes, perceptions of urgency and stress, backdrops, etc.
Because you cannot determine or choose ahead of time what your event will require, what you will be faced with and called upon to do, you do not know how good you will have to be. All you can do is train until you possess a surplus of fundamental skill so comprehensive that you have the ability to apply it across any given event with a likelihood of success.
So what is a practical amount of skill when discussing this “surplus” that leads to success? Practical is defined as:
“concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory or ideas”
“likely to succeed or be effective in real circumstances”
When we observe shootings, we acknowledge that speed without accuracy is irrelevant as you can’t miss fast enough… but we must recognize that accuracy without speed is also irrelevant as shootings most commonly are rapid, compressed time events. You can’t have one without the other and it be useful, also known as "practical", for most contexts.
Practical shooting is focused on the ability to shoot accurately within a compressed window of time AND be capable of doing so on demand.
Training under this principle leads to more useful training strategies for developing skills that lead to success in real world applications where accuracy and speed are both important.
Put it into Practice
So how do I put that into practice aside from mentally recognizing I need to fast and accurate? How do I develop the ability to be fast, accurate, AND consistent?
Routinely evaluate yourself with tests that stress the fundamentals in parallel manners to how they will be tested in the real world.
i.e. Ensuring the distances are equivalent to or exceeding that which you’d face in an actual engagement, movement should be heavily included as a majority of shootings include moving targets and you yourself will likely be moving, round counts should be higher as it ensures you have a durable grip and can sustain your focus, time constraints should be challenging and force you to perform at speed, etc.
Utilize scoring methods that reinforce accuracy, speed, and consistency.
i.e. Hit Factor (preferred) or Time Plus both promote and reinforce the need to be fast, accurate, and consistent.
“Train the skill, not the drill.”
Rather than spending the bulk of your limited live fire training focused on overly specific, nuanced scenarios and drills that only prepare you for THAT, or shooting a specific evaluation course of fire over and over to see if the results get better, identify the individual skills / fundamentals used and train them separate from one another. In doing so, you enable yourself to have greater focus and awareness of what you’re performing which leads to more effective corrections from rep to rep; more effective corrections equals learning and mastering the skill faster.