Tuesday, August 04, 2015

Exclusion.

In a recent post, McThag talked about a little impromptu competition in which he and another shooter had engaged at the range, and the interesting side effect he noticed...
" I start banging out rounds, missing around the gallon container and getting a little frustrated. Finally after about ten shots my jug explodes.

HA!

About a second later I'm surprised to hear him fire his first round.

He's very surprised to find that I'm finished and have hit the jug already.

It was illustrative of a couple things.

We were both so focused we'd lost track of that the other guy was doing. He thought the lull in my shooting was me running out of ammo and pausing to reload. He admitted that the sound of my shooting was affecting his aim and adding pressure.
"
Here's a video from the recent bowling pin match. Notice how the guy closest to the camera completely clears his pins and is clearing and setting down his pistol while his opponent, focused on the task at hand, is still blazing away and doesn't look like he notices until he reloads.

At the shoothouse class, on one of my very first runs, I roll through the door first, get into the room, spot a bad guy, and shoot him down. There's a pregnant pause.

"Don't you think you ought to tell your partner what you see?"

Oh yeah. "Uh, I got a door... a closed door to my lef... my nine, and some dead space behind a big TV in front of me."

"How about the guy you shot? You think that might be important?"

"Oh... I got a dead bad guy over here, too."

And, out of my peripheral vision to my right, I hear my partner say "I got one down over here."


WUT?

I honestly thought I had smoked the only bad guy in the room. While I was taking care of my guy, there was a dude cutting loose with a salvo of 9mm pistol fire not ten feet from my right ear... and I was completely unaware of it, so focused was I on what I was doing.


This is illustrative of a great many things, not least of which is why it's a jillion times better to have more than one person when doing that sort of thing, as well as the importance of communication, and covering your area of responsibility under those circumstances.

For instance, if Sumdood busts up into your house and things get all loud and bangity, don't assume your spouse automatically knows everything you saw and did; their plate may have been pretty full at the time, too. Communication is important.
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