If this post was honest-to-God clickbait, I’d simply tell you not to get into a gunfight. Which is perfectly true. Avoid stupid people in stupid places doing stupid things and the chances of dying in a gunfight sink to near zero. But that’s not the “trick” revealed here. It’s an idea recently communicated to me by TTAG’s resident war hero, Jon Wayne Taylor . . .
I told Jon about a force-on-force faux pas. When the sim hits the fan, I got married to cover. I wouldn’t come out from behind a wall to confront the shooter. As you can see in the video of the Dallas incident above, that’s a really bad habit.
“The reason why you can’t be married to your cover is that your opponent is still mobile,” Jon asserted. “If your opponent can still change positions and is willing to agress, your cover becomes your coffin.”
Being generally coffin averse, I asked Jon how to avoid making that mistake. “You need to change your focus,” he said. “Stop focusing on yourself. Focus all your attention and energy on eliminating the threat.”
Jon counsels anyone involved in a defensive gun use to think of it as an offensive gun use. If you adopt a passive survive-at-all-costs attitude you’ll have a very hard time leaving the safety of cover. Or, for that matter, moving towards the bad guy — which is an excellent way to improve your accuracy.
If you think of a gunfights as aggressive threat elimination, you’re more likely to move out from behind cover — as you should — to attack and put the bad guy(s) out of commission. You’ll be more willing to move towards the threat, or do whatever else is necessary to end the encounter. Permanently.
How do you implement this “simple trick”? Determine right now to go all-in in a gunfight. More than that, practice moving to cover and then leaving it. You can do that in force-on-force training, at a proper gun range (one where you can move and shoot) or at home with an unloaded gun.
When push comes to shove, you need to push as if you’re life depends on it. Because it does. Is that a simple trick? Yes, but are you capable of doing it? Here’s hoping you never have to find out . . .