Klein - Instinct combat shooting: defensive handgunning for police

FOURTH EDITION

INSTINCT COMBAT SHOOTING

Defensive Handgunning for Police

FOURTH EDITION

INSTINCT COMBAT SHOOTING

Defensive Handgunning for Police

CHUCK KLEIN

CRC Press

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2016 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

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Version Date: 20160504

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To the Law Enforcement Officers who are challenged daily by the whims of political correctness, while remaining ethical and honest, as they brave omnipresent deadly evil.

Contents

Since the mid-1950s, there has been a rise in popularity of combat match events as orchestrated by the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC). The chief promulgator of this practice is its founder, Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC, Retired. Col. Cooper has a fine reputation as a gun writer and social commentator, and it is a reputation he fully deserves. In June of 1976, I graduated from Coopers course, which I took directly under him in Washington County, Ohio, with a number of other law enforcement officers. As a combat martial arts teacher, I have always incorporated modern weaponry into my program, and at the time I felt that it was my responsibility to find out about any new developments that may have taken place in handgun technique since WWII.

Although I had been fully persuaded that the proven methods of the wartime masters (Col. Rex Applegate and Maj. William W. Fairbairn) were the proper methods for real-world combat shooting, I kept an open mind. Inevitably, I saw that, excellent as the new technique might have been for winning matches and competitive events, point firing, or as Chuck Klein, the pioneer of this method with a handgun calls it, Instinct Combat Shooting, was the only true combat technique for actual man-against-man close-quarter engagements where the outcome is life or death.

To be totally honest, I wasnt that surprised. Point firing developed as a result of direct and actual combat experience, and research into the phenomenon surrounding events in lethal confrontations.

Todays police-style competitive shooting, the so-called Weaver Stance and the use of the weapons sights, is the standard. It is certainly the method in use in open competition, and perhaps this accounts for its popularity. Nevertheless, in actual close-quarters combat, the use of the weapons sights is almost never appropriate, since the ranges are almost invariably close, that is, 320 feet. What is much more important is the psychophysical reactions of the human organism when confronting a deadly human adversary, which precludes the type of response that sighted shooting requires. This has been consistently proven in actual combat since the 1930s, and it is common knowledge among experienced law enforcement, protective service, and military trainers.

We who advocate instinctive or point firing do not say that the handguns sights should never be used. We only remind those who will listen that their usein combatis necessarily limited to the relatively few situations in which the distances permit them to be employed. At the ranges (between 1 and 21 feet) where nearly all actual armed confrontations occur, certain things happen that prevent sighted firing:

The onset of what psychologists call the peripheral-optic dysfunction phenomena, which entails a tunnel vision lock on to the perceived lethal threat

Auditory exclusion

Timespace distortion

The loss of the ability to render fine motor articulations in favor of gross body actions, as well as the natural inclination to crouch

Instinctive firing actually makes use of the naturally occurring phenomenon, and thus provides the shooter with a technique that is totally compatible with natural physiological response and psychological reaction. I have heard the idiotic criticism of instinctive firingthat man is not born with instincts (!), and therefore instinctive firing is useless. Instinctive firing is called what it is because it is so natural and so easily compatible with human response to deadly threat situations that it feels instinctive (as if the critics didnt know that is what is meant). Directed firing and the already alluded to point firing are terms synonymous with the basic technique.

The Israelis, the British, and the French teach this method of combat shooting to their military, counter-terrorist, and intelligence elites. In the System of Combat Martial Arts that I founded (AMERICAN COMBATOJen-Do-Tao), it is this shooting technique that is taught in our weapons curriculum for the handgun.

I first discovered Chuck Kleins Instinct Combat Shooting: Defensive Handgunning for Police in the late 1980s. I have since recommended it in my monthly column Defensive Combat that appears in Petersens Handguns for Sport and Defense magazine and have placed it on recommended reading lists for students and instructors in and out of law enforcement. I am delighted to recommend this new, expanded edition of Chucks book. Along with Applegates Kill Or Get Killed, Fairbairns Shooting to Live, Jordans No Second Place Winner, Gaylords Handgunners Guide, and Westons Combat Shooting for Police, I consider Instinct Combat Shooting by Chuck Klein to be a valuable reference and training guide.

Readand studythis important book. Should your life ever be on the line, you will doubtlessly say a prayer of thanks for having done so.