POINT SHOOTING

My Point Shooting Journey

• I served the equivalent of an apprenticeship as a firearms instructor in Massad Ayoob's Lethal Force Institute, during the time that Mas was engaged in an ongoing, vitriolic debate with point-shooting advocate Bradley Steiner, in the pages of Handguns magazine. Within the LFI community, point shooting was regarded as the work of the devil.
• I was accorded journeyman status when I began teaching with Peter Samish's now-defunct Defensive Combat Academy, in the Los Angeles area, in late 1994. Pete also derided point shooting, stating that he could not afford the liability of teaching students to fire unaimed shots.
• When I renewed a childhood acquaintance with Rex Applegate, at a training conference in July 1997, Rex attempted to take me under his wing and win me over to his method of point shooting. Over the next year, Rex repeatedly phoned me, wrote me, sent me books and videos and eventually had me invited to a California POST Commission symposium, in July 1998, that dealt mainly with point shooting. Unfortunately, it was at that symposium that Rex suffered a stroke that resulted in his death a few days later so Rex never saw me come around to point shooting, albeit not to his method.
• With my background among advocates of sighted fire, I was resistant to Rex's persuasion but I was willing to re-evaluate my biases. The next big step came at the January 1998 seminar of the now-defunct American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers, where a panel discussion dealt with this topic. I was very impressed when Mike Conti, a Massachusetts State Police officer and firearms instructor, described a sudden, close-range confrontation in which he felt his "correct" visual focus ripped off his front sight and onto the threat.
• In his book Police Pistolcraft: The Reality-Based New Paradigm of Police Firearms Training, Mike briefly summarizes the response to his remarks, on the panel and in the room. The gist I took home from Mike's comments (and the failure of anyone in that room to effectively refute them) is that when things happen suddenly, at close range, you are likely to point and shoot, regardless of prior training.
• On May 31, 1998, I posted the original version of this page, with the intent of facilitating discussion of this topic, which, by that point, was being debated anew in the law-enforcement training community. Within a matter of weeks, I was contacted by Ralph Mroz, who was working on his book Defensive Shooting for Real-Life Encounters. I initially assisted Ralph in developing a better grasp of the autonomic nervous system but also helped him analyze the various methods of point shooting that he discusses in Chapter 8 of that book.
• I was also contacted by Matt Temkin, a New York City court officer, who teaches the Fairbairn-Sykes system of point shooting. Matt and I corresponded intermittently over several years and I finally took a short course from him at the 2005 Annual Training Conference of the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors. That was the final factor in my decision to make point shooting a major part of the curriculum that I taught in the final years that I offered live training and the major reason for 2010 update to my book.

What Is Point Shooting?

• Point shooting means different things to different people. To some people it means hip shooting, with the gun well below the line of sight. To others it means shooting with the gun at or near a conventional position for aimed fire but with the vision focused on the selected target, not on the sights. For others, dating back to Fairbairn and Sykes, and increasingly including more of today's trainers, it is part of a continuum that begins with shooting from the hip and ends with traditionally aimed fire, depending on the distance to the threat.
• This page presents some of the major and a few of the minor variations in point shooting, in an effort to enhance understanding of that continuum.

How Do Bullets Find Their Targets?

• Guns launch projectiles in relatively straight lines. In order for the bullet to hit its target, the muzzle has to be aligned with the target at the time that the bullet exits the bore.
• Precision is a relative matter. Generally the need for precision in this alignment increases as the distance to the target increases. A lot of gunfights with handguns actually occur at ranges of about two arm's lengths or less.
• At the very closest of ranges you could actually hold the muzzle against your assailant and put the bullet into him. It might not go into the most disabling part of his anatomy, but you could say that you aligned the bore to the target by touch.
• As the distance grows you can still get a fairly good alignment with a target which is not moving radically merely by body position. Body position is, in fact, a component of precision, sighted shooting. Target shooters refer to it as the natural point of aim (NPOA).
• NPOA is the orientation of your body to your target for the particular position you are shooting where, after you have obtained your sight picture, you can close your eyes for a moment and still find your sights aligned with your target when you reopen your eyes. When you train repeatedly with the NPOA, it becomes natural to adopt that orientation toward potential targets.
• As your distance from the target increases it usually becomes necessary to use a visual index. As the distance continues to grow, not only do most people need to use the sights to align the gun with the target, but they need to use them with increasing care as the distance grows increasingly longer. Keep in mind that circumstances other than distance may also increase the need for precision.

• W.E. Fairbairn rose to the rank of Assistant Commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Police in the period between both World Wars. During this time he and E.A. Sykes developed a method of close-quarters shooting based not on theory but on their research and observations of actual gunfights. Their method was a radical departure from the traditional, one-handed bullseye shooting which constituted most law-enforcement handgun training at that time.
• The Fairbairn/Sykes method is actually a continuum, ranging from hip shooting to sighted fire, according to the distance to the threat and the rapidity of its appearance. On the one hand they described "quarter-hip," "half-hip" and "three-quarter hip" positions. On the other hand, they also taught some variations on two-handed, aimed fire.
• In late 1942, Fairbairn came to the U.S. to provide training for the new American intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He was assigned an assistant, then-Lieutenant Rex Applegate. In training the OSS operatives Fairbairn emphasized his three-quarter hip position.
• When Applegate transferred to the Military Intelligence Training Center, after a stint with Sykes in England, he combined the body attitude of the three-quarter hip position with the raising of the pistol to eye level, as Fairbairn and Sykes taught as their most basic instruction to beginners.
• The crucial distinction of the Applegate method consists of grasping the gun at the end of a fully extended arm, which is kept about 45 degrees below horizontal, then raising the gun as though the arm were a pump handle and firing the gun with the squeeze of the entire hand as it enters the line of sight.
• In contrast, the continuum of the quarter-hip, half-hip and three-quarter hip positions of the Fairbairn-Sykes method appear to reflect an innate tendency to avoid extending the gun within the reach of an assailant. Thus, they are used as appropriate to the distance to the threat.
• In the quarter-hip or close-hip position, the gun is held alongside the rib cage. In the half-hip position it is extended to the body's midline, with the elbow flexed fairly sharply, keeping the gun horizontal, a few inches above the navel. In the three-quarter hip position, the arm is extended a bit further, lessening the flexion of the elbow and keeping the gun horizontal, about the level of the sternum.
• Col. Applegate gave me a video copy of an earlier post-WWII version of this 1950's FBI training film. It depicts one technique, often referred to as the FBI crouch, that is very similar to Fairbairn and Sykes' three-quarter hip position. A second technique depicted, often referred to as the FBI shoulder point, is very similar to Applegate's method. For many years the FBI taught the use of both, depending on the distance to the target.
• It is noteworthy that legendary lawman D.A. "Jelly" Bryce appears in many photographs in a very aggressively forward-leaning shooting position that closely resembles Fairbairn and Sykes' three-quarter hip position. Bryce joined the FBI in 1934, one of several police officers who were apparently hired because of their records as gunfighters. He was extensively involved in that agency's firearms training program throughout his 23 years of service.
• A continuum of unsighted shooting positions also appears in Bill Jordan's book, No Second Place Winner. Jordan's continuum uses what appear to be variations on Fairbairn and Sykes's half-hip and three-quarter hip positions at zero to three yards and three to seven yards, respectively, then brings in the support hand to supplement the three-quarter hip position for seven to 15 yards, giving us a preview of one of Jim Cirillo's techniques.
• It is unclear how much communication, direct and indirect, there may have been among some of the early advocates of point shooting in the decades prior to World War II. There were FBI agents who were given leave to serve in the military during the war and some special units, such as Army Rangers, Marine Raiders and the Army Counterintelligence Corps were trained directly or indirectly by Sykes, Fairbairn or Applegate or their subordinates.

By this point in his career, Applegate was already wearing the silver oak leaves of a lieutenant colonel and was assigned to the Military Intelligence Training Center at Ft. Ritchie MD. He is pictured here with some of the trademark equipment of the operatives of the day, including suppressed pistols. Col. Applegate generously provided me hours of videos of historic films and recent training programs.

Bill Jordan contrasted his upright style of point shooting with what he called the "gunfighter crouch." The crouch was used by "Jelly" Bryce and is a part of Applegate's system, as well as the Fairbairn-Sykes "three-quarter hip" and "half-hip" positions, albeit not as exaggerated. In this photo the difference between the two shooters is magnified as Jordan stood 6' 6" in height. (Jordan, obviously, appears on the right. The other shooter remains unidentified.) Fairbairn and Sykes taught the crouch because they had observed that it was an instinctive response to danger. Others may have exaggerated it in the belief that shots tend to go high (as they often do in the dark) and that a deeper crouch might allow incoming fire to pass over the shooter. I believe that inexperienced or overly excited shooters tend to jerk their shots low and that too deep a crouch limits mobility.

In this high-speed sequential photograph from a Life magazine article, dated November 12, 1945, "Jelly" Bryce can be seen demonstrating that he could draw to a firing position before a silver dollar he had just dropped fell to the level of the muzzle of his 3½" S&W .357 Magnum revolver - an FBI trademark at that time. This appears to be a fairly typical representation of the depth of his famed crouch.

Cirillo's "Alternative Sighting Methods"

• While some instructors use the term "sighted fire" to imply the use of the sights and "aimed fire" for a coarser visual index using the shape of the gun, the late Jim Cirillo taught a block of instruction that he called "alternative sighting methods."
• Jim believed that when you shoot using the sights, your conscious mind is occupied with the sight picture. He further believed that the subconscious mind works faster than the conscious mind. While you have been consciously training with a formal sight picture, your subconscious mind has picked up on a bunch of subtleties about how the gun is aimed. In particular, the subconscious mind knows what the silhouette of the gun looks like if it is aligned with the target.
• Jim taught his "weapon silhouette point" by taping over the sights on the gun, after demonstrating what the slide of an autoloader or the cylinder of a revolver look like if the gun strays out of alignment. Thus, the gun is visually aimed solely by its shape. Many students actually shoot better with the sights taped. His theory on this was that since they cannot see a traditional sight picture, they don't jerk the trigger when they think they've got a perfect one.
• The purpose of the silhouette point is to get the gun aligned and fired more quickly, by relying on your subconscious mind. The method is independent of the position in which you grasp the gun. In a 1990 class I tried it with the isosceles; in a 1998 class I used the Weaver.
• Jim also taught two variations on a technique where the gun remains below the line of sight. The trick here is to keep the gun parallel to the ground as you lower the gun from your sighting plane to the level at which you want to strike the target. The simpler version, the "geometric point," can be used if there isn't enough light to see your sights. (Obviously, there has to be enough light to locate the target.)
• In the second version, the "nose point," you do a geometric point, making sure that the gun is under your nose. You can then pivot like a tank turret and rapidly engage targets to your sides as soon as the pivot of your body points your nose at them, so long as you have kept the gun under your nose (and you do not overswing your target).
• As I became familiar with the Fairbairn-Sykes system, I came to view these last two techniques as the two-handed analogs of the half hip and quarter hip positions and currently use them as introductory training for those techniques.

Jim Cirillo (left) and I shared a break on the Mobile (AL) P.D. range at the 11th Annual International Training Seminar of the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers, January, 1998. This seminar was my second opportunity to go through Jim's alternative sighting training, the first being the 1990 ASLET seminar. This photo was taken the day after Jim's class. Each time I trained with Jim we were forced to make do with laser-equipped guns in classrooms; I never had the opportunity to take his training live-fire.

The Role of Stress

• Fairbairn and Sykes, Applegate and their more recent devotees, such as Bruce Siddle, emphasize the body's reaction to life-threatening stress. They point out that those who succumb to it tend to crouch, face the threat squarely and lose fine motor coordination, possibly including the ability to close one eye and to focus for close vision.
• These people argue that at close distances people tend to shoot one-handed and that when they get far enough from the threat to get both hands on the gun, they tend to shoot with both arms fully extended (isosceles position.
• More recently, the people who ran the annual National Tactical Invitational "match" observed that virtually all participants used some form of two-handed shooting position when confronted with inanimate targets, even at close range. However, in force-on-force exercises, where participants were armed with guns that fired something other than bullets and actually shot at and get shot by role players, they almost always ended up shooting one-handed.
• These observations, particularly about one-handed shooting, regardless of whether the officer has ever been trained to shoot one-handed, tend to be borne out by videos of force-on-force training and real gunfights, increasingly recorded by "dash cams" mounted in patrol vehicles.
• This group makes its arguments on the basis of the physiology of stress, rather than the speed of the subconscious, as Cirillo argues. They claim that it can take as long as half a second to shift the visual focus from the threat to the front sight, if you can do so at all.

Other Interpretations

• Darrell Mulroy preferred to use the word "fright" rather than "stress." Based on his study of actual gunfights, he taught a two-handed grasp of the gun with both arms fully extended into an isosceles position. In his method, the gun is held below the line of sight. Like Cirillo's geometric or nose point techniques, the elevation is adjusted by holding the gun at the level where the shooter wants to place the shot.
• The California Highway Patrol is currently teaching a program developed by Lou Chiodo. While the program includes the Applegate one-handed technique at very close distances, its main technique is very similar to Darrell's, except that the gun is high enough to include a weapon silhouette visual index like Cirillo's.
• Chuck Klein may be at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Applegate crowd. He isn't concerned with arm position, body position or foot position. His concerns include that the handgun be adjusted to point where your finger would point, that you grasp the gun primarily with the middle and ring fingers and that you develop good trigger control. He concedes that it may actually take more practice to master what he calls "instinct shooting" than conventionally sighted fire. Arguably, the only instinctive component of Chuck's system is focusing on the target.

Target Focus

• Almost all point shooting advocates argue that people will focus on the threat, not the sights, when under the stress of a potentially deadly attack, at least one that appears suddenly, at close range.
• Many advocates of sighted fire cite the example of Jim Cirillo's first gunfight, where he described being able to see every ding in the serrations on the front sight of his S&W Model 10 revolver. Nonetheless, in addition to conventional sighted fire, Jim also taught "alternative sighting methods," none of which involve focusing on the sights.
• For all the variations of point shooting being advocated or taught, I think that Walt Rauch once explained the common denominator with the term "target focus." He emphasized that whatever the system, the shooter's vision was focused on the target, not the sights or the shape of the gun. Any element of visual confirmation of the gun's alignment would be out of focus.

Secondary Visual Systems and the Subconscious

• Regardless of whether you prefer a theory of evolution or of intelligent design, the fact remains that as the embryos and fetuses of more complex animals, including humans, develop, they go through stages that resemble more primitive animals. The founder of the discipline of embryology summarized this as "ontogeny [embryonic development] recapitulates phylogeny [the presumed evolutionary development of life forms]."
• In some organ systems, such as the urogenital tract, older structures are replaced, sometimes being "cannibalized" to create newer structures. In the central nervous system, the newer structures generally "stack" onto the older ones. This contributes to the immense complexity of the human brain. Similarly, the linked human visual system appears to retain all or most of its earlier stages.
• Most people are aware of two major types of light receptors in the human eye. Cones, which detect different colors, are concentrated centrally, where they give us detailed vision. (Color blindness is most commonly the result of the absence of cones that respond to one or more of the colors.). Rods, which merely distinguish light from dark, are spread around the periphery of the retina. This is why some people have been trained to look slightly away from what they wish to see in low light - so that the available light falls on the rods, which can detect lower levels of light than the cones.
• However, there are many more types and subtypes of light receptors in the human eye. Some of them are specific for detecting motion. Some of them do not even form visual images and are responsible for such tasks as adjusting the size of the pupil and regulating the body's natural rhythms as the days grow longer and shorter.
• Most people who have studied enough biology have been taught that that the visual "screen" in the brain is located in the occipital lobe, at the rear of the cortex. In the simplified explanation of human vision, it is usually taught that the images from the right eye travel to the left side of the brain and vice versa. Both of those statements are oversimplifications and different types of visual signals travel to different parts of the brain. For example, you will usually dodge or duck if your peripheral vision senses something close, coming at you rapidly, before your conscious mind has any idea of what it is - from an image projected onto your primary visual cortex.
• As has already been mentioned, Jim Cirillo appears to have sensed intuitively that there is a great deal of subconscious visual perception and that, if one can learn to use it, he can respond more quickly. Jim taught the use of the coarse silhouette of the handgun, of which he believed shooters develop a subconscious perception, to get off aimed shots faster than if one looks for the finer image of the aligned front and rear sights.
• Comments from those who specialize in the neural and visual sciences are welcome.

• Over time I have seen more and more enlightened trainers emphasize the continuum of techniques, depending on the distance to the threat. Whether one regards point shooting or sighted fire as the primary technique is most likely to depend on whether one expects the most likely encounters to occur at distances best measured in feet or in yards.
• I teach virtually all my students a protected-gun position for close encounters. This is basically an enhancement of the Fairbairn-Sykes quarter-hip position. Since it is illegal, in most jurisdictions, to expose or draw a firearm, absent the same justification to fire it, it follows that most engagements will occur at distances of one to two arm's lengths. This is the distance at which this technique is appropriate.
• For those students who take handgun training other than the basic orientation in the CWP course, I include training in the half-hip and three-quarter hip positions, after having introduced them to a couple of equivalent variations of the nose point technique. These techniques fill the gap from bad-breath range back to where one is likely to get the gun out and high enough to gain some sort of visual index. (I also teach some additional point shooting techniques for threats that present themselves at unconventional angles.)
• I teach most of my students the use of the silhouette point at intermediate ranges. It works better for some than it does for others. Usually it's the students with autoloading pistols getting better results than those with revolvers. I have found that the silhouette point often works well for the cross-dominant students (e.g., right-handed, left-eyed or vice versa), particularly in terms of gaining the confidence to fire the shot sooner.
• In the time that I have been investigating this subject I have come to favor aimed-fire techniques that share common features with those point-shooting techniques that get the gun in front of the body's midline or, as I call it, "getting the gun onto the knife edge." I feel that this leaves the operator with an increased chance of scoring hits, even at longer ranges, in the event of focus on the threat.
• I encourage my students to train in various techniques. If environmental (cramped quarters, low light, etc.) or physiologic circumstances limit your ability to use your most favored technique, it's nice to have "plan B" in place. I should note that not all techniques work equally well for all people so, as an instructor, it's also nice to have a variety of techniques available, according to what seems to fit each student.
• While a former teaching partner was concerned with the legal liability of teaching students to fire shots without a confirmed visual index, several years ago I became concerned about moral liability of only teaching sighted fire when I know that Mother Nature is likely to tell them not to wait that long in a gunfight. If they will fire without getting the gun up to the line of sight, I feel that I have to teach how to score hits from such positions.
• As most handgun engagements occur at distances under seven yards, I feel comfortable in saying that trigger control is the most important element in hitting your target with a handgun. You need to be able to work the trigger without jerking the muzzle off its index on the intended target, whether that index is determined by body position or eyesight.
• While I believe in using a full-strength grip on the gun, I believe it is important to recognize that when Allied operatives were taught to fire the gun with a convulsive grip of the entire hand in WWII, they were also being taught to move about with their fingers inside the trigger guards of cocked 1911A1 .45 pistols! This is an unacceptable practice by today's standards. Spend the time on safe dry-fire practice so that trigger control becomes subconscious.
• Remember, bullet placement is the most important component of "stopping power." Use of the sights offers the most precision. I would not discourage use of the sights, when circumstances permit doing so without added risk to yourself, particularly for a shot that requires a high level of precision, such as when only a small portion of your assailant is visible. Once the bullet leaves the barrel, there is no way to steer it or to stop it!
• I emphasize confidence and the determined attitude to prevail as the primary means to ensure that stress does not keep you from fighting as you have trained. Unfortunately, if you have settled for the training which came in the box with the gun, you'll probably be lacking in both skill and confidence when you most need them. Still, I prefer teaching techniques that are confluent with what we know about the body's response to stress.

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