If you consider yourself a serious shooter but are unfamiliar with who Chuck Pressburg is, you just might live under a rock. SGM(R) Pressburg served in the US Army for 26 years before retiring. Most of those 26 years were spent in Special Operations and Special Missions Units.
Chuck was also responsible for the Roland Special trend that swept Instagram gun pages like wildfire. The below video from the Firearm Rack will bring you up to speed if you aren’t aware of what a Roland Special is.
Chuck offers training through his company Presscheck Consulting with a variety of curriculum teaching everything from use of night vision to Close Quarters Combat, Urban Operations, and other restricted subject matter.
Here are some of Chuck’s previous assignments in case you were wondering:
- Ten years in the 75th Ranger Regt including platoon sergeant of a 65 man strike force deployed to Afghanistan twice in 2001/2002. Platoon highly decorated during the battle of Takur Ghar (Robert’s Ridge) for recovery of 2 missing US Servicemen.
- 24 months rifle and sniper squad leader 82nd Airborne Division.
- 2 years Asymmetric Warfare Group(AWG) (Founding member, 1st Active Army unit member deployed to combat, Selection class #1, Operational Training Course (OTC) Class #1) Spending over 20 months in Operation Iraqi Freedom, conducting Small Kill Team (SKT) operations and Direct Action raids in support of conventional and Special Operations Forces.
- 12 years, HQ USASOC performing various tasks as required including a two-year assignment to the G8 section where Chuck performed Science and Technology R&D. While assigned to USASOC Chuck graduated from the Defense Acquisitions University’s Combat Developer’s Course and The Human Factors Engineering (MANPRINT) Course. Chuck spent several years assisting in material acquisition programs for SOF.
With decades of special operations experience Chuck is one of the most knowledgeable people we’ve met when it comes to the topic of combat shooting, among other gunfighter type things. Since meeting Chuck, we’ve had a few opportunities to get learnt about defensive and offensive pistol use for hours on end. What kinda mooks would we be if we didn’t soak up every bit of knowledge that he offered us?
Today Chuck is going to gift you some knowledge that might help you NOT get kilt in da streets.
Have a seat and listen to what Uncle Chucky has to say, you might learn something.
The subject of bullseye-style shooting vs. combat shooting (not the sport, the actual disciplines) are on another instructor’s FB page and since I took the time to address the shooter’s question on a response to a sub-thread that wouldn’t be seen by many, I thought I should repost my thoughts here.
If you can’t execute near-perfect under perfect conditions, everything starts to deteriorate rapidly from there…
Combat shooting is a complex math game where you are stacking tolerances of maximum spreads of human, weapon, and ammo in real time against the acceptable impact zone, what’s in front and beyond it and usually while both you and the impact zone as well as potential itermediate barriers are all in movement.
An acceptable “firing solution” occurs when you believe that you can place the bullet close enough to where you want it to land and make the decision to ignite the primer.
Fundamentals don’t change, How much emphasis we put on any single fundamental changes rapidly as we attempt to get a proper firing solution.
For shooting students exhibiting significant inability to exercise any fundamentals, an isolation of flaws and focus on improving them individually should take place. In the DOD we used the “crawl, walk, run” method of teaching and training.
Basic trigger press drills and sight diagnostics are FOUNDATIONAL in nature, but are crawl-level events. The only time they should be brought up with a “grown” professional is when their shooting foundation was built out of sand and they shoot like dog crap.
So shooting is hitting what you want and “bullseye-style” shooting (shooting bulls at distance) is the perfect execution of these fundamentals.
Combat shooting is like being a Doolittle Raider on the deck of the USS Hornet and someone is ordering you to strip critical items off your plane to be light enough to take off.
“What you do mean I have to dump my tail guns” (perfect sight picture)?! I NEED THOSE”!
“Look son, you’re gonna dump that weight (accept flash sight pictures at closer distances) if you want to make it off this flight deck”! (Shoot fast)
So combat shooting isn’t a different technique as much as it is the process of sacrifing perfection in real time in order to achieve an acceptable outcome sooner. Here’s the secret that nobody will tell you: 99.9% of people choose poorly and sacrifice too many of those fundamentals when fear of death is upon them.
Gripping the ever-living crap out of your blaster and hammering your trigger as fast as you humanly can, WILL work (I do it all the time), HOWEVER it will only work for certain firing solutions, and if you don’t read the cues that you need to ratchet things back and apply more of your fundamentals, then you are spraying. That cue will NORMALLY come from your dot or front sight post. It is nearly impossible for your dot to stay on target and your bullet to miss…that angry bee moved within (or completely out of) the glass before the gun went bang. Did you see it? Did you try to fix it, or did you run with it?
In my handgun classes I call my shots even if they land INSIDE the black from 25 yards in front of my students and its not magic, its EASY. I just ask myself a simple question, where was my dot when the gun went bang?
“That should be 9 ring down at the 4:30 or 5:00″……
If you feel just a little smarter after reading that, you probably are.
Chuck puts out content on his YouTube channel now and again, as well as tons of patron-only content on his Patreon page. You can also find Chuck’s musings on the Presscheck Consulting Facebook page or book a class through Operational Detachment Source.