This guy popped up in suggested videos on YT a few days ago; I have since watched some of his videos. He seems thorough, well-spoken, and thoughtful. This video in particular, is quite interesting. To his credit, his videos are also relatively brief, and to-the-point.



My shooting buddies and I have been incorporating moving targets over the last few months. Those targets are certainly missed more than the stationary ones. I have used falling reactive targets in the past (by way of a balloon behind the vital area). I had never considered following them to the ground; though I have heard the practice advocated.

Those with professional military or LE experience: is this stuff y'all train, or trained, on?

This is another of your excellent questions that will probably annoy some people because it makes them think about something they haven’t considered before.

But because it is thought-provoking, here are some of my thoughts.

First, I’m somewhat leery of that YouTuber because his comments include what I believe are unwarranted assumptions. His continued implied claim that hits must be in the “high A-zone” to evidently have any meaningful effect on a human target is one. Without going off at a tangent, I have what I consider to be good reasons to believe that calling that a “standard” is a competition mindset that he himself criticizes when talking about other factors. Then he keeps referring to 0.15 splits as if that’s something everyone should and can do; I can’t fire a real pistol that shoots real bullets that fast no matter how I operate the trigger and even without regard to actual accuracy.

But those are comparatively minor quibbles to what I consider the important issue, and which I have discussed elsewhere: the possible development of bad ingrained automatic actions in certain situations.

The entire premise of the video seems to be that sometimes people who are shot collapse immediately. Despite the shot “placement” mantra we so often hear in discussions about defensive shootings, it frequently occurs without destroying a portion of the central nervous system, and, somewhat ironically, even one of the video’s shootees was reportedly hit in the lower abdomen (“stomach”), not the high A-zone. Having someone collapse after a shot doesn’t of course guarantee that he’s no longer a threat, but it’s something that is very likely and continuing to shoot someone multiple times after they have clearly stopped being a threat can result in serious liabilities for the shooter. That’s especially true for law enforcement officers wearing body cameras.

We may assume that the only people we’re going to shoot are armed with guns themselves, but what if as they’re falling to the ground the gun goes flying across the street? What if they’re actually armed with a knife or other nonprojectile weapon and our target cannot be a threat while lying on the ground? Is it appropriate that our automatic reaction to a threat is to follow them down with three or more deadly shots? Those sorts of situations are what we’re supposed to be observing and reacting to, just as the video narrator mentions. If we’re responsible for every bullet that misses our target in such a situation, we’re certainly responsible for every bullet that hits.

It’s not uncommon for police officers to fire multiple shots very quickly when a subject is still on his feet and holding a weapon. That’s the reason why sometimes bad guys get shot in the back because the officer is pulling the trigger when the BG suddenly turns away quickly. Could that be justification even if someone is falling to the ground? Possibly as well, but if someone wanted to make an issue of it in court, it might be harder to explain. “He was already on the ground after you shot him once. Why did you shoot him again so many times‽”

But let’s assume that it may be totally appropriate to continue delivering accurate fire as someone is falling and after they’re on the ground. In my admittedly limited airsoft experience with similar situations, I found no difficulty in doing that. (As an aside, in airsoft games people tend to become annoyed if we continue to shoot after they have been hit once.) And I don’t see any significant difference between changing my aim from a standing target to one on the ground and transitioning among several upright targets—except that the latter would usually be much more difficult: The degree of aiming change would be greater; there would be the likelihood of having to engage moving targets, and as we’re moving; identifying threat justification for shooting would be harder, because we must make the determination separately for each individual; and there might be several threats rather than just one. Plus, if someone collapses immediately as shown in the videos, the time we have to change our aim will certainly be longer than if we must engage two or more people who are actively trying to kill us.

I’m not suggesting that the proposed drill wouldn’t have any benefit. If nothing else it would be something most people had never dealt with, and novelty is a nice change of pace in training when possible. But if my training time and resources were limited, I wouldn’t consider it a must do. I personally would also combine the drill itself with a discussion of the concerns I mentioned above.

And as a final question: How would such a reactive falling target be possible to develop for use with live fire on an outdoor range?

To reiterate: my thoughts.

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and novelty is a nice change of pace in training when possible

I agree, but I also think that the pursuit of novelty can lead to the development of needless and or unrealistic/inappropriate "tactics and techniques".

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reactive falling target be possible to develop for use with live fire on an outdoor range?

The balloon targets I mentioned are not too difficult to create. You create a cardboard bracket on the backside of a cardboard torso target, behind your chosen vital area; it's purpose is to suspend the target by means of inflated balloon. When the balloon is popped, the deflated rubber passes through the bracket, allowing the target to fall. It is a neat way to create a reactive failure-to-stop target. If a participant doesn't have existing knowledge of the balloons' locations, you can place some behind the A-zone, and some behind the head. A-zone hits will not drop the target, if that particular target is suspended by a head balloon.

Your comment about novelty may be exactly the case here. Maybe this dude's motivation to train super-charged his creativity, in his limited indoor venue, and he made a mountain of a mole hill. Context is everything. When I attended that 2-gun match, I spoke with a guy who had been to more than a few "high profile" classes, hosted by highly qualified instructors (Pat Rogers, Ken Hackathorn, Kyle Defoor, etc). He quoted one of them as saying "turn the bad guy into a greasy mess". That sounds like a good idea in open warfare, or a proper SWAT high-risk warrant raid; but it's likely not the right approach (as you suggest) for most people, in most circumstances.

Beard? Check. Tattoos? Check. Operator clothing? Check. Sciences-gunfighter-talk? Check. Complete failure to understand actual gunfighting? Priceless.

Jones, what is your outlook on "following to the ground"? As I said earlier, this is not the first time I've seen/heard the concept mentioned. Is there a time it'd be appropriate? Why is it a largely bad idea and unrealistic practice?

Thanks for the idea about the balloons. I can see how that would be great for certain scenario-based exercises.

But that would be too slow and cumbersome for a highly-repetitious training drill of the sort described in the video. His setup with the cardboard target balanced precariously on a couple of supports would be totally unusable in windy conditions of the sort I deal with every time I go to the range. Without a wall to lean the target against, it would require a rather elaborate stand, and when teaching other shooters I always expect that my stands and supports will take unintended hits on occasion.

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But that would be too slow and cumbersome for a highly-repetitious training drill

That is the consistent bummer. The more intricate and immersive the scenario becomes, the more down time is required between reps, to allow for "reset".

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Originally posted by KSGM:
Jones, what is your outlook on "following to the ground"? As I said earlier, this is not the first time I've seen/heard the concept mentioned. Is there a time it'd be appropriate? Why is it a largely bad idea and unrealistic practice?

I think teaching the practice is largely indefensible in court.

Are you attached to Delta or Devgru? Yeah, it might have a place. Attached to a USASOC CIF team? It may have a place? Green side Green Beret or SEAL? Maybe once in a blue moon. Everybody else? I think it’s a bad idea.

Shootings (outside of the above) are almost always defensive/reactive in nature. Even in the infantry world. Someone does something to cause you to react and shoot them. Outside of HR and active shooter, the bad guy has to overtly do something to get shot. You are reacting to the stimulus under a set of guidelines that if you deviate from they call it murder.

Ok, you pop the guy once and he folds. Good shoot. Continue to shoot and there is a chance you’ll wind up in front of a grand jury based upon “trying to get hits in the upper A in point one five of a second”. Can dude do things on the ground where you are justified to reengage? Absolutely. A coworker of mine did just that a year ago. Justified shooting. But, shootings are reactionary. Just making it a standard practice of “I’m a gonna do X, Y, and Z when he does A, B, and C” went out in the 1990s.

From a strict technical perspective, the guy had interesting points. From a practical perspective, he’s full of real bad ideas. Lag time exists on the front end of a gunfight and the back end. You add human lag time to his hypothetical and you’ll surely get three hots and a cot for years to come. Based on reactive/defensive shooting, mind you.

Shooting is a large part of reactive shooting. Processing is a large part too. He references guys that can shoot really fast missing shots in fights. That has zero to do with using technique A instead of technique B, and everything to do with the inability to process at that pace. Shooting movers is shooting movers is shooting movers. LAPD SWAT had a long running streak of first round pistol hits spanning almost 30 years. Their total hit rate with a pistol is still in the high 90s. They have long said that the top shooters can’t process much below a .5 split in real time. My personal experiences says that’s true.

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Originally posted by jljones:
Shootings (outside of the above) are almost always defensive/reactive in nature.

Really excellent discussion!

The point about shootings outside of military combat being reactive deserves emphasizing, and it’s what I had in mind myself. I didn’t, however, think of that term and didn’t express myself as clearly and succinctly. I’ll definitely remember your comments for possible future discussions.

I agree. Thank you for the thorough reply, Jones. The good guys, whether we like it or not, have to abide by the good guy rules. We need to be better than the bad guys. We may like to talk tough, but we ultimately need to maintain that reactionary posture.