The Tactical Edge – January

Point Shooting vs Aimed Shooting

Everybody knows how to point.  You use your index finger to designate something that you want someone else to notice.  Children learn it as young as six months of age.  It’s not taught to them, but rather they instinctively develop it. Children use it to designate the cookie jar to mommy when they want a cookie.  Or they use it to designate a puppy across the street that they want their brother to see.  We learned how to do it in early childhood and use it most of our lifetime.  Point shooting uses the same process only for a different reason.  When you’re holding a firearm correctly, the barrel of that firearm is a natural extension of your index or trigger finger.  In point shooting, you would use the barrel of the gun to align yourself with the target you’re trying to hit.  You can do this using both one-handed and two-handed grips and any of the stances that we have described previously.  That’s a very simple description of point shooting.  Now you ask why would I do this? There are a couple of different reasons.  One reason is that you’re out having fun and just plinking.  It’s easier than taking the time to form a sight picture and sight alignment.  The other reason is probably the most important one.  It can save your life!  I bet that got your attention.  Point shooting is used in self-defense when you absolutely have no time to spare.  It’s you or them and the first one to shoot is usually the survivor.  Point shooting may be used at distances up to 7 yards or 21 feet.  Distances further than that allow you time to use your sights and proper sight alignment.  At close quarters, it is the fastest way to reduce an immediate threat. 

Point shooting — also known as threat-focused shooting, instinctive aiming, and instinctive shooting — is a method of shooting a firearm quickly and accurately that does not rely on the use of the sights in close quarters, life-threatening situations where there is the greatest chance of being killed. 

Point shooting is also a technique used by trained marksmen to improve general accuracy when using a firearm.  By developing a feel for a given weapon such as a pistol, the shooter can become so accustomed to the weapon's weight and where it is aimed that they can remain relatively accurate without the need to focus on the sights of the gun to aim.  By continuously practicing with a weapon, a shooter can develop a subconscious coordination between their eyes, hands, and brain, utilizing a natural human sense known as proprioception to aid in the proper and accurate use of a weapon to the point that they can fire said weapon by "instinct".  The closer a threat is to you, the more accurate you will be one point shooting.  It is not as accurate as sight shooting and should not be used at distances greater than 7 yards or 21 feet. A statistic, that I remember from my police training, states that most shootings in the United States take place in under 9 feet distance.  Point shooting can be very fast and accurate at that distance. 

Point shooting is taught by most police departments in the United States along with all branches of our military.  It is also taught to the military in many other countries.  Point shooting is also a key component of the Israeli Krav Maga self-defense system which is taught to our Special Forces and Seal Teams as well as Special Forces Units belonging to many of our allies.  Instinct or point shooting with a handgun has been taught at most police academies worldwide since the 1980s.  Point shooting can be accomplished using both handguns and rifles, but for our purposes here, we will be strictly referring to handgun shooting.  The theory works equally well in both cases.  Our training is primarily for home defense and concealed carry and a rifle is not really suitable nor very concealable.  Going back to my police training, point shooting was critical to reducing immediate threat at close quarters.  It was even a part of our quarterly firearm qualifications.  The very first stage of our qualification consisted of drawing your firearm from your holster and firing two rounds at a target distance of 9 feet in under two seconds.  That didn’t allow very much time for a aiming using the sights.  This was repeated three times and consisted of 10% of your qualification score.  I think this was typical of most police departments around the country. 

Point shooting has been taught in the military and various police and government agencies since the early 1900s.  It has been improved upon over time until what we have today.  Point shooting can be done from the hip, mid chest hold or with arms fully extended using either a one hand or a two handhold.  It is something that requires practice to develop skill and should be a part of all regular shooting techniques.  Col.  Jeff Cooper developed the modern shooting technique incorporating point shooting in a method known as Flash Sight Picture.  The Flash Sight Picture is a method of allowing the cognitive faculties of the shooter to align the target and the sights without the delay involved in the conscious alignment of sights.  Point shooting will get the job done but it is not as accurate as Cooper’s method.   During a gunfight, waiting to align the sights is too slow.  However, more accuracy than point shooting is required to hit one's assailant reliably.  It is physically impossible for the human eye to focus simultaneously on the rear sight (nearest to one's eye), the front sight (farther away from one's eye), and the relatively distant target at the same time.  The muscles of the eye adjust to focus sight on one specific distance optimally at any one instant, so 3 different distances mean the shooter's focus must hunt (muscular physical adjustments) between all three points of mental concentration.  The greatest adjustment of focus (relatively more ocular muscle contraction) is required to view shorter distances, such as the gun's rear sight.  In the modern technique, the shooter is taught to focus on the front sight of the pistol and align it against the target, ignoring the rear sight for quicker aiming and minimal physical requirements. This prevents the focus of the eye from hunting between rear sight, front sight and target, wasting vital time in refocusing. 

The technique is called 'flash' sight picture because the cognition is best able to perform this function when the target and front sight are presented quickly as a single image, in a 'flash', as if the shooter had just turned around to face a threat appearing from close by.  The shooter's vision can "see" the rear sight, even if the focus is on the front sight.  This is enough for the cognition to make an alignment.  With the flash sight picture, the front sight and a rapidly presented image of the target are used to align the pistol.  This is faster and offers more chance of hitting the target than point shooting from the hip.

The cognitive functions of the brain align objects in the hand with distant objects at great speed.  This ability of human cognition can be used to align the pistol with the target.  Colonel Cooper discovered this specific ability and named it the "Flash Sight Picture". 

Human cognition can perceive a "Flash Sight Picture" at a speed faster than conscious awareness.  This facility was discovered during World War II experiments with rapid recognition of aircraft silhouettes.  Experimentation was continued after the war and branched into subliminal advertising in the 1960s, where images were flashed onto cinema screens for a duration too short for the viewer to notice, yet for cognition to have observed the image nonetheless. 

Use of the Flash Sight Picture requires a rapid acquisition of the front sight in order to allow the brain to perform its calculations.  This focus on the front sight is one of the main themes Colonel Cooper impressed upon students of the modern technique to clear their minds when shooting during a confrontation.  The emphasis for students of the modern technique on the word "front sight" was so great, that a shooting school and a shooting magazine were named after this phrase. 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Robin Brown popularized Pistol Quick Kill. With Pistol Quick Kill, the pistol is gripped and pointed at a target much like a person would point their finger.  "When you point, you naturally do not attempt to sight or aim your finger.  It will be somewhat below your eye level in your peripheral vision, perhaps 2-4 inches below eye level. " The same applies when pointing a gun at a target.  Just as with pointing their finger, the user will ". . . see the end of the barrel and/or front sight while looking at the target. . . You have not looked at the gun or front sight, just the target. "  With Quick Kill, the focus is always on the target, never having to adjust one's gaze or focus even remotely on the near object [the gun or sights]. 

To shoot quickly and accurately at close distances, you need different aiming techniques - which is where flash sight picture and point shooting techniques excel.  Point shooting is relatively simple, as the shooter uses the point of aim rather than sights to bring the firearm on target.  The idea is getting on target and hitting it as quickly as possible.  Point shooting is taught as a close-quarters shooting technique, especially to police departments and military forces around the world.  William Fairbairn, quite possibly the baddest man who ever lived, used the technique and taught it while serving in the Shanghai police and later to British and Allied forces during World War II.  He and Eric Sykes extolled the technique in their book "Shoot To Live," considered one of the authoritative texts on defensive shooting along with the works of Jeff Cooper and Rex Applegate, who likewise taught point shooting.  

There are two dominant point shooting techniques, both of which focus on a digit of the shooting hand to control the aim of the pistol.  In either case, a pistol should be aligned with the forearm - essentially, a handgun should be like an extension of the arm.  The easiest technique is a standard grip in the pistol.  In this technique, control over the gun is asserted by the thumb on the shooting hand in concert with the wrist, either holding in place or manipulating the pistol to the left or right.  The other technique is to lay the index finger of the shooting hand on the pistol above the trigger guard.  The trigger is pulled with the middle finger.  The index finger, in this instance, adjusts the point of aim in lieu of the the thumb and wrist.  Either technique can be used with the non-shooting hand supporting the handgun, or one-handed if necessary.  In essence, the shooter brings the firearm to bear on the target, covers the target with the muzzle and fires.  For more precision, the pistol can be moved with either the thumb or index finger guiding.  Present the pistol, aim and fire. It's that simple.  Practice until you can reliably hit.  Start slow, and at close distances - ten to fifteen feet at most.  Repeat until proficiency is gained. Once you've gotten good enough at it, add it to your rotation of shooting drills.

One of the reasons for the success in point shooting endeavors has to do with the body under stress, namely in combat conditions.  Under stress, peripheral vision contracts, leading to "tunnel vision. " Point shooting, under these conditions, is easier to perform than other pistol shooting techniques.  Most experts would caution, though, that point shooting is primarily for close quarters.  In distances inside about four yards, point shooters can get on target and hit faster.  However, the flash sight picture technique reigns supreme at moderate distances, hence why front sight shooters can hit at moderate distances much better than point shooters.  At longer distances, aimed fire is going to yield more accurate results. 

Well, that’s all about point shooting in a nutshell.  It is something you should make part of your ordinary shooting routine.  As in any other shooting technique, practice will make for muscle memory.  The use of muscle memory equates to speed and in a life-and-death instance, speed equates to winner. In a gunfight, the loser doesn’t walk away embarrassed.  He usually doesn’t walk away! Pass this on to all your shooting friends. 

Well that wraps up this month’s issue of the blog.  We hope you’re reading it, enjoying it, and most of all benefiting from it.  If you have comments, please send them to us.  We love to get email.  In the meantime, keep your gun clean and your powder dry and take someone to the shooting range or training class with you.