Understanding and Increasing Capabilities with a Firearm

Capability – the extent of someone’s or something’s ability.

If you carry a firearm for self-defense or work, you should have a firm and current understanding of your capability with that firearm in terms of speed and precision with respect to stress.  I have taken many firearms training courses that contained no qualification or test of ability – you probably have too. Not every class needs a measurable qualification, especially in the early stages of one’s training where understanding and capability increases are happening at a rapid rate. But, when we decide to start carrying the firearm out in life, it’s time to truly understand what we can and cannot do with it.

For example, I have had many law enforcement officers, prior to a weapon transition drill, tell me that their standard operating procedure is to transition to the handgun in the event of a rifle stoppage anytime they are 50-yards or less. Is that a good idea? Sometimes it probably is a good idea, and, in some situations, it may be a terrible one. A problem with this is the percentage of armed citizens and officers who do not possess the ability to effectively employ a handgun at 25 yards, much less fifty.  Making an SOP or adopting a standard for such individual skill-based decisions is rarely the answer.

A better answer is what I attempted to explain in the video below. Be honest with yourself, test yourself and take a hard look at what your consistently repeatable capabilities are so that you can make the best choice in a deadly force situation.  If you struggle with accuracy at 25-yards, that long shot down a Wal-Mart Isle probably isn’t one you should take at your current level of skill but knowing that allows you to consider other options or tactics. Additionally, developing an understanding of our baseline skills allows us to select where to spend our training time and money as well as how much precision we can trade for speed at X distance in a situation where speed is more necessary than precision.

Daniel Shaw is the Chief Instructor at Gunmag Warehouse

js.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.1.1/jquery.min.js">