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 supported either by the barricade or in the sitting or prone position, and you have two minutes, 45 seconds. That works out to 6.875 seconds per shot. We’ve just fired the only six shots where we’ll have support, that of the ground in the prone posture, and we’re firing at a rate of 3.33 seconds per shot, faster than double speed.
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