Shooting Training Continued

The firing range in all its glory

I have now officially completed the basic POST (Police Officer Standard Training) firearms training. Actually, I'm not sure how official it is because I guess the POST representatives have to come to the range so we can shoot in front of them. But as far as the certification tests given to us by our firearms instructor, I qualified on both of them.

There were basically two shooting tests, both consisting of a 60 shot course. We start out shooting 18 rounds in 60 seconds from the 25 yard line. Depending on the course, we either shoot 6 or 9 kneeling, and the others standing from behind the "barricade" (a.k.a. the painted 2/4 boards on the 25 yard line used to represent walls, doors, etc.) with our strong and weak hands. Most people really struggle with the weak/left handed business from that far away, but even shooting strong handed at that distance with a .45 cal handgun isn't easy. On one of the first tests I was amazing! I landed 15 rounds within about 8" of each other clustered dead around center mass (a.k.a. the dead center of the target that you almost always aim for) from 25 yards. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and didn't get off the last three rounds. If I had, I would have been on my way to the first perfect score for the group. The next time we did the test I panicked and put 19 rounds on the target in about 40 seconds, with all but one landing right on target (the one stray landed in the bottom corner of the paper and cost me -5).

Anyway, I don't know how interesting this is to any of you, but it was pretty darn exciting to me, even after three straight eight-hour days of shooting. The experience was not without its downsides though. For one, I ripped a big hole in my finger while reloading when the grip grooves along the rear of the slide caught me when I didn't release quickly enough. Ouch! I started bleeding and then had to reload again and did the same thing. This time I was really bleeding and had to take a time out to get doctored up by one of the other trainees who had a first aid kit in his car.

The last day, we did shotgun training and I struggled a bit but still managed to qualify. To finish out the day, however, we did some preliminary "combat shooting." For the first two days we were focusing on marksmanship, but now that we were all shooting pretty well (I averaged about 282/300 over the four tests and you need 255 to qualify) we began to integrate a bit of movement into our drills. In one drill he had us load our gun with a single round and an empty clip. We then had to fire the one round into the target while moving out of the way of "return fire" and then reload, keep moving, and get off our second round. It may not sound like much, but when you're dealing with live rounds, even a little bit of movement complicates the situation (at least psychologically) quite a bit. He then had us walk around in a square, constantly facing the target, and firing on his spontaneous command. That meant we would be shooting while moving forward, sideways (resulting in a one handed shot), or while walking backward.

The last thing we learned was a really intense move to use during close quarters combat. The scenario he gave us was a bar fight in which our partner would be struggling with a knife wielding opponent. We wouldn't have a clear shot so we would have to make a "contact shot." That means actually sticking your gun into the target and pulling the trigger. He demonstrated this and something unexpected happened - nothing. He then showed us how when you make contact with the target using the barrel of the gun, the pressure on the front of the slide moves it back and disengages the firing pin from the ammo chamber. In other words, if you stick your Glock into someone's ribs it's not going to fire. So he showed us a technique that would allow us to successfully make a "contact shot" with a Glock. It basically involved wrapping your non-shooting hand around the barrel of the gun, jamming it into the target, and pulling the trigger. He said that the muzzle gases from the shot would give us a temporary "sunburn" feeling on the side of our hand closest to the mouth of the barrel. He then said that we all looked rather unenthusiastic to try out this new technique, but a couple of brave volunteers stepped forward to give it a try. I was one of the last but felt confident enough now in our instructor and in myself to go forward. I pulled it off, got a mild sunburn on the heel of my left hand, and may now save my partner's life in a close quarters situation.

Anyway, apparently we've got more combat training down the line between now and Christmas, and after that, we're out in the field. Of course we'll be with our trainers for the first few months, but be that as it may, it's real from there on out. Get excited!