One of my responsibilities at the job that pays my bills is to write the monthly qualifications for our personnel. I am always trying to come up with suitably practical, challenging, and reasonable standards. My goal is always to challenge folks to improve their skillset without demoralizing or frustrating them, which is always a fine line.
This month, I wanted to focus on reacting to the gun shooting dry and then performing an emergency reload. The problem with the standard “1 plus 1” or “2 plus 2” drill is that the shooter knows the gun will be dry in one or two rounds, so the officer is not reacting to the gun going dry but rather, can anticipate it as part of the drill. So I came up with this drill:
Load three magazines with 3, 5 and 7 rounds. Mix them up and randomly place two in your magazine pouches and load one in the pistol. I used an FBI bullseye target since we have a metric ton of them in stock but you can set up any target you like. The scoring I used was as follows: 9-10 ring hits count as 2 points, 7-8 ring hits count as 1 point, and anything outside of the scoring rings is 0 points. Start at low ready at 7 yards and fire all 15 rounds, reload as necessary. For standard patrol officers shooting with duty gear with retention straps, I set the max time to 20 seconds. Max points possible is 30, and minimum passing is 24 points.
Most of you who shoot with any regularity should find these standards to be fairly easy to achieve, so try adjusting your time standards. I would say 14 seconds would be a good place to start for an experienced shooter open mag pouch rig. A sub 10-second score would be something to strive for. As Pat McNamara would say, find your home. See where your skill level is and then push yourself past your current level. This is why we are such proponents of performance metrics. Without measurable performance standards, there is no way to track progress. You would never know if you were ever actually improving your skill set.
Give this drill a try and let us know what you think in the comments below.
I like this variation for the same reason I like the malfunction drill where someone else loads your magazines and puts in an occasional dummy round / snap cap (or not).
Next step as you become comfortable with this would probably be doing this in a low light environment, adding the additional complication of recognizing the slide lock quickly in adverse lighting and dealing with the flashlight (mounted or handheld have different issues, but are additional considerations regardless).
Thanks!
Huh… Turns out I’m all super tactical since I’ve been doing this for a while to force unplanned mag changes without burning through full mags of ammo. Good to know! 😉
I 2nd Dennis’ recommendation on having someone add a snap cap in one mag to simulate a dud round.