Something we teach in all of our courses is practice the way you want to perform under duress.  If you get into a situation where you need to use your handgun, your adrenaline will be pumping and you won't be thinking.  What will you be doing?  Your body will automatically be performing what you've trained it to do - a common term for this is "muscle memory."  

For example, when you train, how many shots do you fire in a single string?  If you step to the line and shoot until the slide locks open on an empty magazine - that is likely what you will do in a self-defense situation.  

For example, see the Dashcam video of Chicago police shooting Laquan McDonald in late 2014.  Mr. McDonald was shot 16 times by one police officer.  
I am not discussing whether or not the shooting was justified.  Mr. McDonald had a knife and was clearly disregarding the commands from the police.  Since we weren't there it is hard to judge what made the officer decide to shoot.

If you watch carefully you can see small puffs of smoke coming from Mr. McDonald's body after he falls to the ground.  I would guess he was shot at least 8 times after he was on the ground.  No one would argue that Mr. McDonald was still a threat to the officers on the ground.  Shooting him on the ground was likely not intentional by the police officer.  I believe that he probably trained by doing a magazine dump when shooting his pistol.  Thus, when he needed his gun against a real target he shot until the gun locked open and hit his target 16 times.  We train to shoot twice at the target and then evaluate if the bad guy is still  

You've heard the saying "practice makes perfect."  For handgun training, think "perfect practice makes perfect."

Saw this news story a while back about a 19 year man in Arizona who accidentally shot and killed an acquaintance while (apparently) trying to wake him up.  

The first and most obvious observation that I have here is that Mr. Thomas was breaking all three of the NRA rules for safe gun handling.  The rules are:

1. Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
2. Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.
3. Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

These rules work together to ensure safety while handling and using guns.  It is my privilege to teach and enforce these rules with every class.  I want every gun owner to apply them every time they handle a gun.   

Some additional thoughts:

• Mr. Thomas thought the gun was unloaded.  Notice that each rule starts with "always."  Clearly, he should still not have pointed the gun at his friend, even if the gun was unloaded.  When he unloaded his gun, he should have checked the chamber to ensure it was in the condition he expected.  We teach our shooters to complete a chamber check whenever loading or unloading their gun.  
  
• The story says that Mr. Thomas is a competitive shooter.  It is hard to believe that a competitive shooter wouldn't learn and apply the basic rules of safe gun handling.
• Ultimately, this shooting was "negligent", not "accidental".  It is every gun owner's responsibility to learn and apply the rules.  Not applying the rules is negligence.

We completely redesigned our website.  We hope the change makes it easier to navigate and easier for me to keep it updated. It is still hosted by ipower but was built via Weebly.  I'd love to hear your feedback on the look and features of the new site as well as any suggestions you have for new content.  

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