Dry Firing Rules

Last week, I gave my justifications for using dry firing as a regular technique for improving marksmanship. I mentioned that I cover some rules meant to make dry firing safer. Here are the dry-firing rules that the DPS teaches all new recruits in their training academy:

1) Unload your gun in a specific spot reserved for that purpose. Leave all of your ammo at that place.

2) Go to a 2nd specific reserved spot in another room to do the actual practice. That room must contain no other guns or ammo.

3) Use only one pre-determined target.

4) Practice whatever skill you plan to improve (trigger squeeze, drawing from concealment, drawing from concealment while rolling on the carpet, or whatever) for the time that you have allotted, or until you have achieved the results you planned for that practice session.

5) This may be the most important step: Make a definite mental break when you are done dry-firing. It is best to say to yourself aloud, “I am done dry-firing”.

6) Go back to the place with your ammo, and either restore your gun to carry status, or stow it.

Always start your dry-firing practice at rule #1!

Dry Firing

One of the things I cover in my CHL class is how to dry-fire safely. I present some rules for dry firing that arose from an unfortunate incident involving a DPS officer, and show how each of those rules is designed to prevent a similar negligent discharge.

Why would we want to practice dry-firing? There are some excellent reasons for practicing with an empty handgun, but at least one drawback (covered below).

The first reason that occurs to just about everyone is that dry-firing is cheaper than live firing. That was true even before the availability and price of ammo got ridiculous a little over a year ago. But that might not be the most important reason.

Note that dry-firing a center-fire pistol manufactured in the last 100 years or so should not damage it. However, if you are the least bit concerned about that aspect of dry-firing, you can get a dummy round (the ones sold at the local gun stores are the SnapCap brand) with a semi-hard plastic insert in the place of the primer. They cost a couple of dollars each, and are sold in packs of 6. Although pricey, they can be re-used indefinitely. If you have a rim-fire gun (typically a .22), you MUST use a dummy round to prevent damage to the firing pin.

Dry-fire practice gives you the opportunity to go through some things that you just can’t reasonably do with a loaded handgun. Indeed, practicing a draw from concealment will get you kicked out of most shooting ranges. With an empty handgun, you can (relatively) safely practice things like jumping sideways or rolling on the carpet while drawing from concealment — skills that might someday come in very handy.

Dry-fire is also very good for marksmanship training. This may be counterintuitive, since the main difference is that in dry-firing, the gun doesn’t make a loud noise and try to jump out of your hand, so it isn’t ‘realistic’. The problem is that even though you should always perform the squeeze sequence so that the trigger-break is a surprise, the fact that you know that the gun is going to recoil makes it very difficult to avoid anticipating it. Dry-firing leads to a different type of “muscle memory”, where you honestly are not considering the recoil, but the follow-through. That “muscle memory” will carry over to live-fire practice (and to actual defense use), and your marksmanship will be better on that account.

You can get some of the benefit of that no-recoil “muscle memory” by getting a .22 conversion kit if there is one available for your particular handgun, and use that for at least part of your live-fire practice. While it still makes a noise, it isn’t nearly as loud, and the recoil is so slight you might not even notice it.

A potentially major drawback of dry-firing is that you don’t get quite the same trigger pull sequence as you get with live fire. For instance, with a Glock, you have to manually rack the slide every time before you get to the normal trigger pull, because the Glock is single-action-only. On a D/SA pistol, the first round can be fired double-action (the trigger-pull cocks the gun) and subsequent rounds are then fired single-action, because the recoil of the live round does the work of cocking. When dry-firing a D/SA, every trigger pull is double-action, which is typically several times the force required for single-action. I have actually experienced a case (during a DPS range test) where this slight difference in “muscle memory” caused me to drop a point on the 2nd round. After that, I knew what the problem was, and corrected it — but in a real firefight, that might be a disaster.

Still, I recommend a combination of live fire and dry fire practice. As mentioned above, a .22 conversion kit can be useful for practicing your live-fire marksmanship at a cost substantially lower than using centerfire ammo.

BRASS: Key to Good Marksmanship

A common acronym used by the military to teach elementary marksmanship is BRASS. I use this in my CHL classes. It stands for:

• Breathe. The sequence of events leading up to firing a round starts with taking a normal breath.
• Relax. Next, let out about 1/3 to 1/2 of that breath, and hold it. The rest of the sequence should take less than 3 seconds, so you won’t be holding your breath long. If the rest of the sequence takes longer than about 5 seconds, that’s just too long, and you need to start over from the top
• Aim. This means that you will properly align the sights, with the front sight typically just below the part of the target you intend to hit. I teach my students to first align the sights while still at “low ready”, and bring the front sight up to the target.
• Slack. Now that the front sight is on the target, you place your finger inside the trigger guard for the first time in the sequence. “Slack” means pull the slack out of the trigger. All modern semiautos have a little slack in the trigger. Generally, a newer or well-maintained gun will have less slack than one that is worn or abused, but they all have some. In the case of a double-action handgun (such as my Ruger revolver), I find it useful to pull the trigger to the point where the gun is cocked, and stop there. That takes a bit of practice to develop muscle memory.
• Squeeze. The final part of the firing sequence. Continue to squeeze the trigger until the gun fires. The trick to getting the shot to go where you want it to is to squeeze steadily and straight back, so that you don’t know exactly when the gun will fire. This will keep you from flinching or pushing.

There is actually one more step to this sequence, and that is the “follow through”, or bringing your front sight immediately back to the aim point after the round fires.

The whole BRASS sequence, including the follow-through, should take less than 3 seconds.

NRA Basic Pistol Instructor Certification

I had a busy weekend. I made the trip up to ShootSafe Academy to take the 20-hour instructor’s course to qualify to teach the NRA Basic Pistol course. The whole thing was pretty exhausting, but worth the effort.

I learned a lot more than I thought I would. While I will be getting my instructor’s credentials in a few weeks, I still have some major effort in getting my presentations ready. But I can already incorporate some of the useful information I got from Bill and Dan in my regular CHL courses.

Meanwhile, I have identified some other courses that I would definitely like to qualify on, such as the “Refuse to be a Victim” course. ShootSafe hasn’t scheduled the instructor’s course for that yet, so it’s likely to be a few months before I get to take that one.

Summarize

Well, I finally got around to writing about the last step in the LEAPS sequence.

“Solve” would also work here, except that you just can’t solve every problem. This step is where you try to move to a win-win solution if at all possible.
As Dr. Thompson emphasized in his book, Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion, you should not care what the other person says, only what he does.

To summarize

L — Listen

E — Empathize

A — Ask

P — Paraphrae

S — Summarize

Paraphrase

This is the feedback step, one of the most important parts of the LEAPS process. This is how you confirm that you really understand what the other person has said. Interestingly, in a conflict situation, where the other person is angry at you, simply repeating back what he or she just said has a calming effect. It’s almost like magic.

Something like: “If I understand you correctly, you said_[paraphrase what you think the other person said]___”

Even when the other person is already angry, he will subconsciously recognize his own thoughts, and will get the message that you are trying to empathize. If you do this right, the response will be an affirmation, and can increase rapport.

Next: Summarize

Ask

In order to communicate your empathy, it is necessary to ask questions. Your questions need to be neutral and obviously geared toward soliciting the other person’s viewpoint.

Of course, asking questions can be done in a manner that would increase rather than decrease the level of confrontation. Some guiding principles: 1) Ask questions that have answers which are simple facts. 2) Avoid the use of 1st-person or personal pronouns, and 3) (Sgt. Hilan Priddy’s favorite saying) “Do not use the words that spring most readily to your lips”.

Unfortunately, it is much easier to come up with examples of the wrong way to ask questions than it is to show the correct way. I will discuss some bad examples when I get to the summary.

Empathize

To have empathy for someone does not mean that you agree with that person. It means that you understand what that person is feeling, and perhaps why he (or she) feels that way. When you make an honest effort to achieve that type of understanding, you can actually build rapport with someone who is angry with you. That may sound strange, but I have actually been able to do exactly that myself.

I had thoughtlessly failed to include a co-worker in some discussions that were important to him, and he came to me, angry. When I realized why he was angry (I listened carefully to what he had to say — remember LISTEN?), I asked him some neutral questions, then admitted that I had screwed up. What might have been a very confrontational relationship became a good working partnership.

Another example that you might be able to relate to — the surly waitress. I once had a very rude waitress, which took me by surprise, but instead of retaliating by refusing to leave a tip, or becoming argumentative, I replied to her that it appeared to me that she was under a lot of stress that morning, and that if she wanted, she could handle her other customers and come back to me later. The almost immediate change in her demeanor was truly amazing.

An important tip on gaining rapport through empathy: You can’t just think to yourself that you are trying to understand. You must actively engage the other person, and make it clear that it is important to you that you understand what the other person feels, and why.

The best way to do that is to ask questions, which is the subject of the next post.

Listen

The first letter of LEAPS stands for listen, a typically underdeveloped skill in most folks. I know that I’ve personally found this to be a challenge.

There was a time when I tried to sell insurance for a living — and while I probably wasn’t the absolute worst insurance salesman in the world, I certainly ranked in the bottom 5%. I had worked as a programmer for a life insurance company, and I knew about things like the mathematics behind insurance and annuities, and I knew the laws and principles of operation, etc. I went into sales thinking that any of that stuff actually mattered, and when I tried explaining all of these things to my potential clients, their eyes glazed over.

Listening (not explaining) is the most important skill that a good salesman must have. People have differing things that are important to them, and they differ in the way they want to be sold to. You just start talking, and you’ve killed the sale. A better approach is to ask the client what sorts of things are important to them, and listen carefully to the answer. You can then tailor the rest of your presentation to what is important to the client.

What does this have to do with non-violent conflict resolution? Quite a bit. The same skills that a professional salesperson uses, namely basic communication skills, can be used to de-fuse — or completely prevent — a potential conflict. And the door swings both ways. I would hope that most folks who are applying for a handgun license are already mature enough not to let a fender-bender escalate into a shootout, but learning to sell stuff better can help your everyday life, even if you aren’t a professional salesperson. After all, you have to sell yourself every day; you have to convince your boss that you are worth keeping. And in the current economy, that can be vital.

Next up: Empathize.

LEAPS

There is a highly effective way to improve interpersonal communication that is taught as a regular part of the Texas CHL course, in the section entitled “Non-Violent Conflict Resolution”. While the techniques taught in this section are of very limited use in any situation that might call for the use of deadly force, they are very useful in other situations, and if applied to your everyday relationships, could well lead to a happier, and even a longer and healthier, life.

The mneumonic is LEAPS, which stands for:

1) Listen

2) Empathize

3) Ask

4) Paraphrase

5) Summarize

I plan to use the next five blog entries to expand and explain these five techniques, and show how they will benefit you.