THAT’LL GET YOU KILLED IN THE STREETS
Your heart is pounding, mouth parched, muscles tense, adrenaline pumping, stomach tight; you almost forget to breathe, like the first time you got pulled over by the local constabulary as a teenager. Gun in hand, you move down the hallway, toward a doorway. Nearing the opening, you encounter two armed threats and punch out your pistol, its sights dancing on the nearest one.
This could be a home-defense scenario. It could also be part of a course of fire in an action shooting competition.
The question of whether participating in competition enhances your ability to perform in an actual armed encounter has been hotly debated over the years, especially on social media and the internet, where everyone has an opinion. And you know what they say about opinions. Some have a visceral disdain for competition without having had any actual experience in it, while some others clad in colorful shooting jerseys think they’re God’s gift to DEVGRU since they can shoot 0.17-second splits on paper targets at 5 yards.
We asked for advice from several titans of the training world, who have lifetimes of operational, training, and competition experience. Mike Pannone and Frank Proctor are well known for their proficiency behind a gun and in coaching others. In addition to long careers in special operations, they’ve also competed at the highest levels with Master and Grand Master
