How good is good enough?

Open Courses 2015

Pistol Instructor, Kent WA, June 15-19

Basic SWAT, Polson MT, July 27-31

Basic SWAT, Spokane, WA,  August 17-21

Tactical Pistol, Kent WA, Sept 14-15

Mechanical & Ballistic Breaching, Bellingham WA, Sept 21-22

Carbine/Subgun User, Spokane WA, Oct 19-21

Tactical Pistol, Spokane WA, Oct 22-23

Hostage Rescue, Spokane WA, Nov 16-18

SWAT Team Leader, Spokane WA, Dec 14-16

I shot a USPSA match this last weekend, it is the first one I’ve shot in about a year. Life gets in the way sometimes. I didn’t do as well as I hoped I would, but I didn’t suck as much as I thought I would either.

Although I haven’t shot a match in a year, I have been shooting. Whether it’s teaching a class, my own team training or just getting my licks in on my own. Live fire combined with a steady diet of dry fire helps keep that edge sharp. But how good is good enough? I mean at some point I gotta say this is it, right? Wrong, that is total bullshit.

My thoughts on being able to run my guns hard are completely because I really want to save my own ass if they are needed. You see, I like me, and I want to live as long as humanly possible. I would also like to be able keep my teammates and good citizens alive, and I really don’t want to be more of a liability to them with shitty gun handling than a bad guy. So I train.

Within the small ponds of my agency and team, by all accounts I am doing pretty good. As I get older the thought of when it’s time to quit goes through my mind alot. I do not want the team to wish I would go away, so I have a personal standard that I will always be in the top 10% of shooters on my team. For the agency, that is simple enough to do, not so on a team of pretty competent and competitive individuals. Alot of those dudes shoot very well. So I train.

In addition to the above, I don’t want to be good at my teams qual. course or standards drills. I want to be good at ANYONE’s course or drills. This leads back to USPSA, since I don’t know what the stages of fire will be until I get there, I have to work a lot of different skills to stay good. The RMR forces me into the Open division, there are some no-shit shooters in that division, they have Star Wars Blasters and crazy ass holsters/mag pouches. I shoot it with my normal carry gear. That isn’t an excuse, my objective is to whip all their asses with that gear and I am willing to put in the work to do it. So I train.

Last, is that in this world I don’t have any idea who my adversary will be. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it will be some uncoordinated, untrained knucklehead with a Jennings .22 shooting at me from 40 yards out. Or maybe I’ll get unlucky and it will be a USPSA Grand Master at five yards. I don’t get to choose my adversary so I need to be ready for everyone and anyone. My buddy who is in his mid-thirties is in excellent physical condition. Someone once told him, “Wait until you’re fifty”, his response was golden. He said, “Fifteen more years of training? I can’t even imagine what kind of shape I’ll be in at that point, I can’t wait”. Great mindset.  I will never be “good enough”. So I train.