When I was talking about stress, I meant whatever stress causes us physiologically to experience the effects of fight or flight, mild or severe. This may be fear, yelling, jostling, confusion, or actually getting shot at. I have heard shots from orientations other than behind the line, and I really think that the sound of shots, especially if we experience aduitory exclusion, will be less stressful than the sounds of an attacker yelling and moving or people screaming in confusion.

As instructors our goals should be to help students to develop the competency they need in order to function in any stressful situation. This begins with ingraining safety and proper gun handling. What we practice we will revert to in a stressful situation, so we want our default to be competency, not fumbling and confusion. Once we have a basic set of safe and proper gun handling skills, we can begin to add stressors to the training.

Stress innoculation training has merit but in my opinion still does not warrant putting people forward of the line in training. I think that many trainers carry their desire to inject “real world” into training a little overboard. As I said before, sim gun scenarios are probably as effective as you can get in training for experiencing “real world” situations.

You did say that “Obviously, we can argue about whether meeting the stated goals is really necessary to create well-prepared students (again, I’m truly ambivalent about that question)” and I am arguing about the necessity of the down-range drills. (With all due respect, I am also wondering about your ambivalency).

Which means I am also arguing about your next comment: “if we accept the goals as valid — and many well-regarded instructors do just that — there does not appear to be any way to satisfy those goals without doing some form of the downrange drill.”

If the goal is to get people used to hearing gunfire from a down-range position, then obviously the solution is to have the students stand to the side and have someone shoot past them. But does this accomplish the goal of getting people used to being SHOT AT, which I believe is the intended objective? Not really. Aside from airsoft or other simulations the obvious solution is to have your students engage in live-fire gunfights in class. Stress innoculation against the stress of being shot at is the goal, right?

What this points up is the fact that “downrange drills” are a half-assed substitute for the real thing. Fortunately, there are other good ways to train with added stressors that don’t violate safety rules.

My experience has shown me that even “well-regarded” instructors often hold to methods and techniques because they are rarely if ever willing to revisit their basic assumptions about what they are teaching and why.

Shooting in the close proximity of people that I don’t want to shoot when I have all the time in the world to get my hits is not real world. Yes, somebody might be in close proximity to the target, but the stress and time pressures of having somebody shooting back (the reason that they might be a shoot target) is a totally different animal.

We agree more than we disagree. As I said, in my opinion Yeager’s video shows a downrange drill being done in a very unsafe manner, without needed controls.

One clarification, though: my point was that just any old type of shooting under stress would truly not meet the goals of the instructors who do downrange drills with their students. The downrange drill is designed to innoculate the students against a particular and specific type of stress, not just against stress-in-general.

Obviously, we can argue about whether meeting the stated goals is really necessary to create well-prepared students (again, I’m truly ambivalent about that question). But if we accept the goals as valid — and many well-regarded instructors do just that — there does not appear to be any way to satisfy those goals without doing some form of the downrange drill.

Hopefully one where muzzles aren’t waving everywhere, where the students are hitting their targets, and with students who are not at beginning level in their gunhandling skills… 8-o

One key point of training under stress is to evaluate our competencies with the techniques we are using. When training with “stress” we we learn what techniques work under stress, and/or how competent we are with our desired skills. The physiological effects of fight or flight response in such areas as decreased fine motor skills and the many distortions in visual and auditory perception warrant stress innoculation training for the purpose of evaluating and improving our physical skills and our ability to operate effectively under stress. Stress innoculation training for the purpose of making ourselves emotionally ready for a gunfight is ludicrous.

I would say that if you want to experience gunfire from the muzzle end, then work it out with a trusted training partner on a range sometime. I don’t think that any such thing should be done with a large class of new shooters. As someone who has been training and teaching for some time, I know that even experienced shooters are often morons. The training environment should simulate as much as possible real-world problems, but allow students to learn and make mistakes that don’t end up with pools of blood everywhere.

Airsoft and similar tools are probably better training aids for getting used to pointing guns at people and having guns pointed at you than standing down range and having someone send bullets past you.

As MG pointed out, safety is a process, not an event. Safety is a set of skills and rules that must be followed and practiced in order for them to work in a stressful situation. All times, all circumstances. Safety needs to be our default, and any exceptions we make in the real world must be conscious choices, not mistakes made “by accident” because we were not rigorous about safety in our training.

We do live in a 360-degree world, and there might come a time when you need to fire a shot while a loved one is within a few feet of your intended impact point. There is value in stress innoculation, for most people. I’m somewhat ambivalent about whether a defensive shooter “needs” a downrange drill to be truly prepared (and thus whether it’s a necessary risk or an unnecessary one), but I have no in-theory quarrel with those who teach it.

However, when a downrange drill is done, it should be done in a very cautious and controlled manner, with multiple safeguards. If you have the philosophy that the stress innoculation is important, then you need to provide it for your students in the safest possible manner. I do not think these guys did that.

Typically, what an instructor is trying to accomplish with a downrange drill is something some call “stress inoculation” and others call “emotional climate training.” The goal is to allow the student to experience – in a safe environment – the full weight and magnitude of shooting near (but not at) an innocent human. Most responsible shooters are truly freaked out by that thought. Yet if & when the student uses a firearm for real in a defensive situation, it is entirely likely that someone they love and care about will be within feet (and possibly within mere inches) of the muzzle at the time they fire. If they are freaking out about the mere thought of firing near an innocent, they won’t be able to make that shot when they need it, so the reasoning for the downrange drill is that if the student has already experienced and gotten over the extreme emotional “freak out” associated with needing to make a shot near but not at an innocent, they will be that much steadier under stress and that much more prepared to make that shot when it counts.

At the same time, those instructors who send students downrange during such drills (rather than going downrange themselves while students shoot) are typically trying to accomplish a similar stress inoculation goal: they want their students to experience, in a safe and controlled environment, what gunfire looks like from the front. Again, it is fully expected that any reasonable person will be disconcerted by both the idea and the actuality of having a gun fired in their general direction, even if it is not being fired at them. The reasoning here is that those who have experienced the emotional impact of such a situation but in a safe environment will be more prepared and better able to keep their cool under pressure if & when it happens in real life, and that they may recognize that they are being shot at somewhat sooner than someone who has never seen or experienced gunfire from the muzzle end. The goal has far less to do with anything macho than it does with simply getting over and past the extreme emotional reaction in training so that the student will be able to respond calmly and efficiently in real life.

By this point, whether you agree with the arguments or not, it should be clear why these goals cannot be accomplished with anything but live ammunition on a hot range.

Again, to be clear: I’m not saying these drills must be done and I’m sure not urging anyone to get out this weekend and run downrange! I’m just trying to articulate what instructors who do this type of drill are intending to accomplish when they do them.