NEW JOINT STUDY BY THE FORCE SCIENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTE & CANADA/UK SUPPORTS THE USE OF POINT SHOOTING
Force Science News: Transmission # 134 published Part 1 of a 2-part series dealing with a major new study dealing with Close Quarters armed encounters.
A key finding is that "those who win lethal assaults do so, in part, because they achieve target acquisition with their firearm in a way that is directly opposite of how most Officers are trained."
The info goes on to explain that basically Officers are trained to use their sights in the process of acquiring the target and shooting, while experienced Police operators basically use Point Shooting which allows them to shoot more quickly and more accurately.
THE STUDY
The study was conducted in the United Kingdom by Dr. Lewinski of the Force Science research Center and Dr. Joan Vickers of Canada's University of Calgary. Dr. Vickers is a renowned researcher of the relationship between eye movement and athletic performance. Funding was provided jointly by the National Police Federation of England and Wales and the Force Science Research Center.
24 Police volunteers participated in the study. 11 were highly experienced male Officers with a median age of nearly 39, and who had had ERT assignments in fighting terrorists. 13 were rookies who had completed their pre-service firearms and simulation training, and were considered "ready for the street." Their median age was just over 30, and 7 were females.
The terms ERT and rookies are used below to identify the two groups.
WHAT WAS STUDIED
The focus of the study was a FOF situation which was based on an actual incident that lasted about one minute. In it, a man is discussing a problem with a receptionist, and an Officer is about 20 feet in back of him.
The man becomes increasingly agitated, and then he begins cursing and slapping the table. Suddenly, he yanks an object from under his coat and pivots quickly. In most instances, he has a handgun and fires at the Officer, but randomly he spins around only with a cell phone in his hand.
Prior to the FOF incident, all Officers were told that they were on duty to provide security at the office where an armed encounter could be expected to occur. They also were told that they should "handle the threat" appropriately. Their handgun was loaded with one Simunition cartridge.
SOPHISTICATED MONITORING
Each Officer wore light-weight head-mounted video cameras. One aimed forward, and one aimed at his/her cornea (the outermost lens of the eye), to precisely track the line of sight. Another video camera in the room took a video of the Officer from the front. The three videos were synced together to make a split-second record of the Officer's actions, and exactly where he/she was looking, in what sequence, and for how long. A small red circle was used to display that.
To keep the actions of the receptionist and the suspect the same for comparison purposes, they worked with an acting coach so they could maintain the same timing and mannerisms in their repeated performance.
Each volunteer went through the scenario 7 times. And no significant change in their reactions was noticed in the videos.
SHOOTING PERFORMANCE
The ERT strongly out-performed the rookies.
- They spent significantly less time assessing the situation before drawing their gun. On whole, they drew "well before the suspect began his pivot," Vickers reports. Most "held [their gun] at chest level before aiming." The rookies tended to delay drawing until about a second after his turn.
- The ERT shot before the suspect/assailant got his round off 92.5% of the time, beating him by an average of nearly .18 seconds. The rookies shot first only about 42% of the time and on average lagged behind the attacker by more than .013 seconds. The rookies reacted to the assailant during every phase of the encounter.
- The ERT hit the assailant nearly 75% of the time, compared to about 54%--"slightly more than chance"--for the rookies. ERT hits were in the upper torso (center mass) 62% of the time, versus about 48% for the rookies.
- In more than 60% of their trials, rookies fired when the assailant brandished a cell phone instead of a gun, compared to only about 18% for the ERT.
WHAT THE TWO GROUPS FOCUSED ON
Anyone would expect the ERT to shoot better than the rookies. But what was significant, was the relationship between what the Officers looked at and for how long, and their performance in 1. assessing and reacting to the situation and 2. their shooting accuracy.
A meticulous analysis was made of the last 7 seconds of the incident, and 2 important focus factors were found to occur.
Fixations (when an Officer's gaze was stabilized on an object or a location for .10 seconds or longer. And saccades (rapid eye movements from one location to another for at least .067 seconds.
THE DISCOVERIES
- The ERT Officers tended to use short fixations during their initial assessment and as the suspect began to pivot toward them. They then used longer-duration fixations as they aimed and fired.
"They needed less time to 'read' critical cues" and acquire the info that "allowed them to prepare their shooting movements in advance and prevail over the assailant."
- The ERT increasingly directed their attention to the suspect's gun hand/arm as the scenario evolved. "They increased the percent of fixations to this location from 21% in the assessment and early pivot phases to 71% during the final 2 seconds.
On hits, the ERT directed 86% of their final fixations to this one location, revealing a remarkable degree of focus and concentration under fire." And, the study explains, they had time for a final, undisturbed period of super-concentration that Vicker's calls "the quiet eye," which has been linked with high performance across many different genres of athletics. In this, their eye remained settled on a defined target location through trigger pull.
- "The rookies used an opposite strategy and had long-duration fixations at the outset and shorter durations as they aimed and fired." In effect, "the rookies were behind" the suspect's actions and were "caught by surprise."
- "The rookies did not show the same funneling of their attention to the assailant's gun hand/arm," the study points out. Early on, similar to the ERT, they concentrated a minority of their fixations there.
But at the time the suspect aimed and fired, only 33% of the rookies' fixations were directed there, a modest and inadequate increase. And whatever quiet-eye time they exhibited was significantly lower.
THE TELL-TALE SACCADE
The Officers' last abrupt shift of gaze before firing was found to be radically different between the 2 groups.
- The rookie's final saccade, especially among those who missed when they fired, "occurred at the same time they tried to fixate the target and aim." At that critical moment in the last .5 second, the rookies in a staggering 82% of their tests took their eyes off the assailant and attempted to look at their own gun, trying to find or confirm sight alignment as they aimed.
"This pulled them out of the gunfight for what turned out to be a significant period of time," Lewinski says. Vickers adds: "On a high percentage of their shots, the rookies did not see the assailant as they fired," contributing to inaccurate shooting and the misjudgment of the cell phone as a threat.
- About 30% of the ERT also looked at their gun, but their timing was different. Most of their gaze-shifts occurred before the Officers aimed, "followed by the onset of their aim and fixation on the target and firing."
FLAWED TRAINING?
The researchers pose the possibility that the rookies' training may have contributed to their poor performance. They were taught pistolcraft "similar to how most Police Officers first learn to shoot a handgun: to focus first on the rear sight, then on the front sight, and finally on the target, aligning all 3 before pulling the trigger."
"This is a very time-consuming process and one that was not successful in this study," Vickers says.
Somewhere across their training, practice, and experience, the successful ERT Officers had learned what essentially is a reverse process: Their immediate and predominate focus is on the weapon carried by their attacker. With their gaze concentrated there, they bring their gun up to their line of sight and catch their sights only in their peripheral vision, a subtle "sight glimpse," as Lewinski terms it.
"They have an unconscious kinesthetic sense to know that their gun is up and positioned properly," he says. "This is a focus strategy that Olympic shooters use," says Vickers, "and it is simpler, faster, and more effective."
WHAT'S NEXT
The next part of the 2-part series will address the question: What will it take in terms of gaze and attention training to make Police firearms skills much greater much faster?
..........
DEALING WITH WHAT'S NEXT
To me, it looks like a job ready made for P&S.
AIMED Point Shooting or P&S is a natural method of aiming and shooting that is fast, instinctive, and accurate. It is for use at Close Quarters, in good light or bad, when you can't see the sights or there isn't time to use them, when moving, and against moving targets. And it also can enhance other shooting methods.
Also, P&S requires little or no training to learn, and can be maintained with a minimum of practice - read easy and cheap to learn.
P&S has been around since the early 1800's, so it is not new, but it is not well known.
A look back into its history, and info on its suppression by the US military to accomodate a design fault of the 1911, will shed some light on why that is so. Click here for more on that.
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