Why practice in the Dark

In our firearms training classes we teach that you must be able to operate and run (including loading, reloading, and malfunction clearing) your firearm in the dark as well as the day. The initial logic behind this is that the probability of an encounter with a perpetrator of a crime is higher in low light than broad day light, depending on your environment, and your specific circumstances. But actually there is a far better reason than just the low light factor.

In our Combat Focus Shooting^TM classes we discuss that when in a dynamic critical incident (when you are in fear for your life), there a distortion in the perception of time. A good example of this is a car accident. If you have ever been in one you know what I am talking about. In a car accident in 1992 in which my car rolled after striking a car head on at 55mph (by the way, the driver of the other vehicle swerved to miss a dog, and I happened to be there in her way …“in my lane”) I can still vividly recall that everything was in slow motion, the windshield shattering, the pavement going by the passenger side window very slowly, and the car finally resting on the roof, upside down. Wow, I can still see it all. And I wondered back then why the body reacts in such a way to a dynamic critical incident. Well let me give you a brief and very simple synopsis of that whole process. We will liken our eyes and brain to a video camera taking 6 frames of film per second (this is only an example people), as compared to 12 frames per second when we are afraid for our lives. What is happening is that our brain is taking as much information in as it can, as fast as it can, so that it can assess the treat, and cause the body to respond accordingly. We only comprehend at the moment about every other frame, so it appears to us that time has slowed down when in reality everything is moving at real speed. This is the basic concept of what is taking place, now lets look at how that might affect our defensive shooting.

If we in fact are looking at our handguns while in a dynamic critical incident, our perception of time being slowed down will cause us to drive ourselves to perform whatever task we are trying to perform faster than real time. For example, if I am performing a critical incident reload (also known as a speed reload) while looking at my handgun I will see myself as moving way too slow, and will try to speed up my efforts which in turn can cause me to over shoot my magazine well, not to mention it takes my eyes completely off the threat which is bad for the home team. We could spend a lot of time on example after example of how this is detrimental to our defensive shooting, but for the sake of simplicity we will leave it at that. You should be getting the big picture by now. Remember how we practice is how we will respond. Make a point to run through the operations of your hand gun while at the range, and at home using dummy ammunition.

This is one of the reasons that we sell A-zoom Snap Caps. Hey, they are great for dry fire practice, but they are even greater for running through drills like loading, reloading, clearing malfunction, and press checking in the dark instead of using live rounds, which can cause a negligent discharge during practice in the home. This is not a sales pitch for our products; we don’t care where you get them.

But you should have as a regular training schedule to practice these operations in the dark for all of the reasons listed above.

• Keep your eyes on the threat until it has been neutralized with extreme prejudice,
• then assess the area.
• It will be through frequent and realistic training that you will act intuitively in a dynamic critical incident.