Shooting vs.Fighting

Knowing how to shoot doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to fight.

- Patrick McCarthy

You might be able to drill holes in a bull’s-eye consistently at the range, but real fights generally don’t involve an assailant standing motionless, 20 yards away, in front of a dirt berm. They’re high-stress confrontations in less-than-ideal circumstances, and they often happen with only a few feet separating you from your attacker.

In order to learn more about integrating shooting skills into a real self-defense situation, I attended a 1.5-day Close Contact Handgun course hosted by Independence Training in Arizona. Instructors Cecil Burch and Glen Stilson began the class at an unusual time: 7 p.m. on a Friday. As the sunset, students paired up in a dimly lit parking lot and practiced approaching one another with realistic lines such as “Hey man, can you spare some change?”