When choosing a firearm for personal protection, and especially when choosing a duty weapon, buying the cheapest gun you can find is not often your best option. This is a tool that has to work properly every time you draw it. It should also be easy to operate and durable. You should be able to find spare magazines easily and quickly as well as holsters, and you should have easy access to someone certified to repair it if something gets broken.

Everyone has their preferences and some are just loyal to a brand of weapon for the same reason they are loyal to a brand of vehicle. For this particular podcast episode I sat down with Shawn Sullivan, a military veteran, former first responder, professional pilot, and gun dealer that does executive protection details with me. Shawn carries the Sig P365L when doing executive protection and I carry the Glock 43X. Shawn owns both and my next pistol purchase will be the P365L or XL because it's an excellent weapon, like my Glock 43, just different. 

In this podcast we compare the two weapons, what we like and don't like in the event our listeners are in need of a good sub-compact for work or personal protection and want to know the difference.

Todays episode of brought to you by EDCStore.com

Blessed be the Lord my Rock, Who trains my hands for war,
And my fingers for battle
Psalms 144:1 NKJV

I got my first gun when I was just a little boy. It was a .22 caliber, single-shot Cooey rifle, and since Daniel Boone only needed one shot to down whatever he was shooting at, I figured he was a good example to follow. I loved that gun and I practiced until I could sling lead as well as my legendary hero, or so I thought at least. It took time, lots time, but the hours of practice shooting increasingly smaller and smaller targets eventually paid off. And that is when I learned that if you own a firearm, it's important to train with it often.

A good friend who currently serves in Law Enforcement invited me and two other police officers to a range that allows those who are qualified, to train in more advanced tactics involving moving and shooting, multiple targets and so on. Training how you fight means that you wear the same gear that you do when you are working so everything feels and performs as it would when you are on the job. Sadly, most ranges don't allow that but this range does making the time training there absolutely invaluable.

The standard protocol for most people when training at the range is to hang a paper target, load up a few magazines with ammo, and fire away hoping most of the rounds hit the target, and preferably close to the center. The problem is that if you have a bad habit, and you put 50 rounds through your gun without correcting it, you just practiced a bad habit 50 more times. You are effectively training yourself to become better at being inaccurate.

The better approach is to hang your target, then take your time ensuring your grip is correct, and your stance and sight picture are good. Then most importantly, your trigger pull should be a slow and smooth squeeze and when the gun goes off, it should surprise you. Then hold the trigger down for a split second before you slowly release it until it clicks. That is called the reset and you want to hold your trigger in that position then slowly squeeze the trigger again until it surprises you by going off. If you do this consistently you will be more accurate because the less movement you have with your trigger finger and the smoother that minimal movement is, the less you are moving the barrel of the gun so your shot will be more accurate.

I enjoy working with my firearms for recreation, but for work, I need to make sure that I am prepared to win a gunfight in the unfortunate event I am forced into one and that requires mastering advanced skills. Standing static in front of a target is not realistic to what will probably happen in a gunfight. Moving and shooting forward and back then laterally in both directions, changing from strong to support hand, one-handed shooting, shooting from cover and so on is very challenging. If you want to master these skills you need to train in an environment where you can practice them consistently and often.

A very important part of training is evaluating your technique but it's impossible to do objectively and completely without either someone watching you that is knowledgable or even better, shooting a video of your training so you can evaluate and correct things you may not even realize you are doing. That's why I like going to the range with other advanced professionals as we can always learn something of value from each other as well as identify things that need to be adjusted to become more efficient and effective.

It's not about shooting a good target, it's about perfecting fundamentals, then movements so that everything is smooth, efficient, and fast as well as accurate. Efficient and precise movement means you get effective rounds downrange more quickly. Working for hours to shave mere tenths of a second off the time it takes to draw your weapon and shoot accurately can mean the difference between life and death.

It's precision training, fine-tuning, seating good habits, and developing consistently effective results. This is what wins gunfights. So this is what range day looks like.

If you own and carry a gun, I strongly urge you to train consistently both on the range with live ammunition, and dry firing at home. These skills are perishable so no matter how much experience you have, practice is necessary to be safe and effective in the unfortunate event you are forced into a gunfight.

It was over twenty years ago now when I first started boxing. Initially it was about learning fundamentals, which is a good place to start. I was taught stance and positioning and then we moved to throwing punches. I learned how to throw the jab was first, then the right cross, or what was called one’s and two’s. For two weeks I would show up at the gym and for the next two hours he had me throw one’s and two’s over and over again. I hated every second of it because it was boring and monotonous but I kept showing up each day and did the work.

After two weeks of throwing one’s and two’s for two hours a day my punches were crisp, accurate, smooth, quick, and seemingly effortless. I had literally thrown thousands of punches in that time frame, employing the techniques he had taught me, and I was starting to look like I might know something about boxing. Everything I learned since then was built off of the foundation, and discipline I established in that first two weeks. Twenty years later I still begin every boxing workout with drills focussed on fundamentals. I like to establish my fundamentals first to ensure I am doing everything correctly, then I progress to whatever I choose to train that day.

I approach my firearm training the same way. When I go to the range, I like to start off by establishing solid fundamentals before I move into more advanced training. When I check and then drill my fundamentals I can identify problems and make any corrections if needed. I walk through each element of drawing then firing my weapon checking to make sure my fundamentals are solid. The more repetitions I can do focussing on fundamentals, the more smooth and accurate I will be when shooting under stress or in less than optical conditions.

I also like to practice both tactical and combat reloads as well as malfunctions. I want to be confident that under stress I will be able to smoothly and quickly clear malfunctions, or reload if neccesary. I also spend time training one-handed shooting and shooting one and two handed with my support hand.

These are things very few shooters practice because they are not fun, but if you are in a gunfight there is a high probability that you may need to shoot single handed or with your support hand. You want to be accurate and confident and the only way to do that is to train over and over and over again until you are just as proficient and confident one handed or with your support hand as you are with your regular two-handed grip. 

As an NRA Certified Law Enforcement Firearm Instructor I most commonly see men and women that only train their strengths and their primary goal is to shoot the best score they can with the tightest groups that they can on a static paper target. Training with a grip they never use means less accuracy and can be a blow to the ego. What I do my best to instill in my students is that as an armed  professional our only focus should be learning how to win a gunfight in the event we are ever forced into one. 

In boxing you can look like Mike Tyson when you are working the heavy bag but when the thing you are punching starts punching back, it’s very different. The same can be said for gunfighting. Paper targets don’t shoot back so while they can indicate problems with your fundamentals, a high score while shooting a qualification has little correlation to how you will perform in a gunfight. 

Train your fundamentals tirelessly. Smooth is fast and strong fundamentals make you smoother and more accurate. 

Train the things you are not good at far more than your strengths until you have no weaknesses. Your weaknesses may get you killed or the wrong person killed due to your inability to be accurate and effective. Don’t accept weakness, train it into a strength.

Create your training regimen based on what you need to train most. For example, this is my most recent training day.

Dry firing done at home before I go to the range:
- Draw and dry firing right handed two hand grip - 5 minutes
Draw and dry firing left handed two hand     grip - 10 minutes
- Draw then switching from right to left hand two-hand grip and then back - 10 minutes
- Dry firing one handed left and switch to right then back - 5 minutes
- Tactical reloads - 5 minutes
- Combat reloads - 5 minutes
- Stage One Malfunction clearance (tap, rack, ready) - 5 minutes

Range training to drill fundamentals looks like this:
- 
Load 4 magazines with 2 or 3 rounds each - change up strong and weak hand practicing combat reloads

- Load 4 magazines with 6 rounds each - change up strong and weak hand practicing tactical reloads
- Load 4 magazines with 6 rounds each - substitute one or two rounds per mag with snap caps to simulate malfunctions - change up strong and weak hand 

When I identify a weakness - problem with accuracy, speed, smoothness, draw etc, then I will repeat that drill until I solve the problem. Once I am confident with my proficiency, I work to increase the speed in which I draw and shoot.



The grouping I shoot on the target then becomes an indicator of my skill level as well as proficiency with strong or support hand, one or two hands, standing, kneeling, shooting around obstacles, and how speed impacts accuracy which translates into how well we adhere to our fundamentals when we add speed to the equation. 


Setting up to shoot your best qualification score with your most common grip with no distractions or challenges other than hitting the target is not an indication of your ability to win a gunfight. Being accurate while facing challenges with grip, challenges with speed, changing mags, simulating malfunctions, creating challenges with obstacles, and so on is more indicative of how you will perform when you face challenges in a gunfight.