"How Close Is Too Close"

[ricco]

By now everyone interested in firearm self defense has heard of the "Tueller Drill" and might even have done it Force on Force (if you haven't you should, under qualified supervision of course. Lot's of gunfightin' nonsense get cleared up real quick). So anyway, here is the original article by Dennis Tueller that started it all, "How Close Is Too Close".

http://www.theppsc.org/Staff_Views/Tueller/How.Close.htm

 

[gerhard1]

ricco, I seem to recall from the Kansas forum that you went through Ayoob's LFI-1 course. So did I in 1985 Long Beach California, and I thought it was a great course.

One of the things that we covered was the issue that you raised in the OP: how close is too close? The premise here is that the bad guy has a contact weapon of some type, either edged or impact. One of the exercises we did was the Tueller drill.

What we did, for those not familiar with the Tueller drill was to stand seven yards from our partner and run to him as fast as we could to simulate a knife attack. The defender was to draw his weapon (simulated, of course) and try to stop the opponent before he got to him.

IIRC, due to my mobility issues, I was the slowest one there and it took me right around two seconds to close the seven yards.

How close is too close? I'd say twenty-five feet or under.

 

[chuter]

just think about taking a 21 ft long string, holding one end and someone else takes the other end to draw a circle around you, and anyone in that circle could have hands on you in 1.5 seconds or less.
Hard to avoid people that much in real life, just have to try and be aware and looking for clues and people not acting right.

 

[KOPBET]

Remember that 7 yards is just a number, a starting point for training. It is not an absolute. It could very easily be much farther depending on your capabilities (or lack thereof).

 

[ricco]

ricco, I seem to recall from the Kansas forum that you went through Ayoob's LFI-1 course. So did I in 1985 Long Beach California, and I thought it was a great course.

One of the things that we covered was the issue that you raised in the OP: how close is too close? The premise here is that the bad guy has a contact weapon of some type, either edged or impact. One of the exercises we did was the Tueller drill.

What we did, for those not familiar with the Tueller drill was to stand seven yards from our partner and run to him as fast as we could to simulate a knife attack. The defender was to draw his weapon (simulated, of course) and try to stop the opponent before he got to him.

IIRC, due to my mobility issues, I was the slowest one there and it took me right around two seconds to close the seven yards.

How close is too close? I'd say twenty-five feet or under.

I did LFI1 in '99 and we did a version of the Tueller Drill as well. I should look at the notes from the class but if I remember correctly the fastest person in the class was in his 20's and clocked a 1.2 something, he shaded me by about a tenth, I was in my 40's. The slowest person in the class was a senior lady, she clocked a little over 3 sec. Several instructors over the years have commented that they suspect the average CCW, drawing from concealment under life and death stress would have a 2 to 3 sec draw to first shot. From doing Force on Force I suspect those instructors may be a bit optimistic. If we look at real life incidents we see, excluding CNS hits, bullets from handguns rarely stop a determined adversary immediately, certainly not in a 0-2 sec Tueller Drill time frame.

 

[gerhard1]

I did LFI1 in '99 and we did a version of the Tueller Drill as well. I should look at the notes from the class but if I remember correctly the fastest person in the class was in his 20's and clocked a 1.2 something, he shaded me by about a tenth, I was in my 40's. The slowest person in the class was a senior lady, she clocked a little over 3 sec. Several instructors over the years have commented that they suspect the average CCW, drawing from concealment under life and death stress would have a 2 to 3 sec draw to first shot. From doing Force on Force I suspect those instructors may be a bit optimistic. If we look at real life incidents we see, excluding CNS hits, bullets from handguns rarely stop a determined adversary immediately, certainly not in a 0-2 sec Tueller Drill time frame.

Unless the caliber starts with '4'!!

Okay, I'll behave.

 

[RockHopper]

 

[StLPro2A]

I did LFI1 in '99 and we did a version of the Tueller Drill as well. I should look at the notes from the class but if I remember correctly the fastest person in the class was in his 20's and clocked a 1.2 something, he shaded me by about a tenth, I was in my 40's. The slowest person in the class was a senior lady, she clocked a little over 3 sec. Several instructors over the years have commented that they suspect the average CCW, drawing from concealment under life and death stress would have a 2 to 3 sec draw to first shot. From doing Force on Force I suspect those instructors may be a bit optimistic. If we look at real life incidents we see, excluding CNS hits, bullets from handguns rarely stop a determined adversary immediately, certainly not in a 0-2 sec Tueller Drill time frame.

Probably the longest segment of time is the Indecision Period where one under threat has to process the danger before making a decision to act. Unless one has been in threat contact with the aggressor long enough to already have recognized the aggressor as an active threat, I'll bet the Indecision Period is way longer than the Tueller Drill even addresses. It's that Indecision Period that gets one killed.

 

[ricco]

Probably the longest segment of time is the Indecision Period where one under threat has to process the danger before making a decision to act. Unless one has been in threat contact with the aggressor long enough to already have recognized the aggressor as an active threat, I'll bet the Indecision Period is way longer than the Tueller Drill even addresses. It's that Indecision Period that gets one killed.

Absolutely, couldn't agree more.

It has been my contention for years that we give too much attention to the physiological aspects and give little or no thought to the psychological aspects, much to our detriment.

 

[gerhard1]

Absolutely, couldn't agree more.

It has been my contention for years that we give too much attention to the physiological aspects and give little or no thought to the psychological aspects, much to our detriment.

Agreed. BTW, if anyone here is a member of the S&W forum, you might find my thread on factors in surviving gunfights interesting.

I'll post a link to the thread. The psychological aspects are given a lot of consideration.