The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery. Massad Ayoob

       Power stance, high hand, crush grip, front sight, smooth roll. The author, foreground, brings it all together as he wins a shoot in the Northwest. Note that spent casing is in the air above his STI, but gun is already back on target despite recoil of full power .45 hardball. Photo by Matthew Sachs.

C HAPTER F IVE “Maxing” Qualification And Competition

      The master gunfighters of the 20th century – Bill Jordan and Elmer Hilden of the Border Patrol, Jim Cirillo and Bill Allard of the NYPD Stakeout Squad – all felt that shooting in competition sharpened your ability to shoot under stress in defense of your life. If you haven’t tried it, you should.

      Just in case you haven’t competed, let’s see what it’s like. Come with me and shoot a match. I can’t make it up for you. I don’t do fiction. The only way to do it is for you and I to “channel” together, as the Yuppies say. It’s June 5, 2001. We’re at the Cheshire Fish & Game Club, the host range for the event, sponsored by the Keene, NH Police Department. The occasion is the annual conference of the New Hampshire Police Association, and the combat shoot that accompanies it is the de facto state championship in police combat shooting for cops in the Granite State.

       You want a gun and ammo that you know will work. With the Glock 22 (NY-1 trigger, Meprolight fixed sights) and Black Hills EXP ammo, you have both.

       Getting Ready

      Bad news: you’re stuck doing it with me, a “geezer cop” in his fifties. Good news: this particular geezer knows this particular beat, and you and I are prepared to compete on a level playing field.

      Rules are that you have to compete with the gun you carry on duty. No tricky recoil compensators or optical sights. Holsters must be suitable for police wear, with retaining devices not only present but fastened before each draw. Ammunition must be suitable for law enforcement use.

      My department issues a traditional-style double action .45 auto that is justly famous for both its accuracy and its reliability, two things I appreciated when I won this match with my issue weapon last year. For the whole second quarter, I’ve been in plainclothes – actually allowed to wear a beard, which I can’t in uniform – because I’m a captain who handles primarily administrative and training tasks. These include test and evaluation of new equipment, etc. I’ve been assigned to test two new uniform security holsters that are about to come into the field. Since the Glock pistol is by far the most common in law enforcement today, it is what these new holsters were initially made to fit. My chief has given me permission to carry one on duty for testing purposes. It’s the Glock 22, .40 caliber, the single most popular Glock thanks in large part to police sales, and at the same time, the single most popular police service handgun in the U.S. today. It is as it came from the factory: bone-stock, equipped with the 8-pound New York (NY-1) trigger and Meprolight fixed night sights.

      The new security holsters haven’t come in yet, so my gray whiskers and I have a reprieve for a while yet in plainclothes, but I’m carrying the G22 to get bonded with it beforehand. It’s a good little pistol, particularly with the ammo my department issues for off-duty or plainclothes wear with that caliber, the Black Hills EXP. It sends a 165-grain Gold Dot hollow-point out of the barrel at an honest 1,150 feet per second, a .357 Magnum power level, and it is loaded to match-grade quality specifications. When we sighted in this gun/ammo combo for the first time at 50 yards, aiming for the head of a silhouette target, we jerked one shot down into the neck and didn’t count it. But the other four shots were in the head in a one and seven-eighths inch group. Is this gonna be accurate enough for the B-27 target with competition scoring rings, where the tie-breaking center X ring measures 2 inches by 3 inches? Oh, yeah!

      We’re wearing what we wear to work these days. BDU pants (loose, comfortable, lots of pockets, great for strenuous things like going prone and running, which we’ll have to do here.) Polo shirt with the department patch logo on it, one size large to help conceal the bullet-resistant vest. (We wear the vest on duty; we’ll wear it here.) Handcuffs in a Galco quick-release plainclothes carrier. The dress gun belt is by Mitch Rosen, as are the first magazine pouch and the holster. The rig fits us perfectly, as it should; it’s the one Rosen called the ARG for Ayoob Rear Guard. It rides comfortably inside the waistband behind the strong side hip, secured by a thumb-break safety strap. Backing up the Rosen pouch with its 15-round Glock “law enforcement only” G22 mag are two more pouches, both Kydex, one by Blade-Tech and one by Ky-Tac. This match will have some stages where two reloads are necessary, and then we’ll have to reload to “hot” condition before refilling magazines, etc. Hence, the need for four magazines on the person, including the one in the gun.

       Each shooter finds his own pace. The hands of the shooter in the background are beginning to separate as he prepares to reload his Beretta while transitioning from standing to left-side kneeling; the officer at right is already in a kneeling position and has just fired the first shot from that position with his Glock.

       Firing prone from 50 yards. Note that each officer has a slightly different technique.

      Let’s get our head right. We’re going for the title of top dog, or in this case, top law-dog. That engenders pressure. There’s a little more of that on you and me than on most of the others. One person has to be the defending champion from last year, and that raises the price of the ego investment bet on the table. That person, right now, is us.

      We get the briefing on the course of fire. There has been a last-minute change in rules. At the barricades, we cannot touch the wall with either gun or hand to stabilize for the shot. OW! Particularly at 50 yards, this hurts accuracy: we’re firing free-hand instead of with support. The good news is everyone has to do the same. It’s fair, a level playing field. We are awfully glad, you and I, that we have a lot of experience shooting at long range with a pistol held in unsupported hands from the standing position.

       50 Yards

      We’ll have exactly 60 seconds to go prone, fire six, reload, stand, fire six from one side of the barricade (no support, remember), reload again, and fire six more from behind the wall on the other side without actually touching that wall. We MUST be effectively behind cover or we’ll be penalized.

      We load the Glock 22, holster, fasten the safety strap, and stand by, hands clear of the holster. On the signal, we draw and drop into the rollover prone technique you and I learned from world champion Ray Chapman so many years ago. AAUUGGHH! There’s grass between us and the target, obscuring aim! We scoot to the side, get a clear shot, and begin shooting. The readjustment of position has put us behind the other shooters from the get-go.

      We fight the urge to hurry. Front sight is dead in the center of the target. We carefully press the trigger back until the shot breaks. Then again. And again.

      Those six are done, and the clock is ticking. We feel the shots went right in where we wanted them. A review of the target in a couple of minutes will prove us right. But now, as we leap to our feet, our right thumb punching the Glock’s magazine release as our left hand snatches a fresh mag from behind the left hip and snaps it home, the left thumb pressing down on the slide lock lever to chamber a fresh round, there is a sense that we are behind the others in time. This is a quick stage. Normally in police combat shooting, 24 shots are fired from this 50-yard distance, all of them