I've always had the impression that shooting while walking was highly ineffective. My experience with shooting has usually been at a paper target 50 feet away where if you want to hit the black you need to carefully align your sights, have good posture, control your breath, and so forth. If just a small misalignment in your sights or the incorrect grip can really impact your accuracy, I figure that taking steps while trying to shoot would completely throw your sights out of alignment and make your accuracy incredibly poor.

However, recently I've been playing a lot of SWAT 4 as well as trying out various mods. One mod which I have been enjoying is the SSF Realism mod, which has a page here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/5103/sheriffs-sp...ces-realism-mod

From that page, here is a comment from one of the modders:



I doubt that even an expert shooter can be accurate while walking or while walking quickly. But I figured that I might as well ask people on the internet who might know a little more about SWAT teams about how accurate the above statement is.

Is it possible that someone who is very skilled at room clearing might be able to take relatively accurate shots while on the move? Or should accuracy really go into the crapper as soon as you take a step?

Really depends on the situation, in MOUT training where we were clearing target filled areas. I was pretty accurate while walking at normal speed or slower. At a run I couldn't hit a damn thing besides some lucky shots. I'm by far not the best shooter in the world but at walking or slower speed my accuracy wasn't really effected.

EDIT- I'd like to point out military training does things in a crawl, walk, run phase. Crawl you are walked through it and basically taught what to do. Walk you go through it a a slow pace to make sure you get it. Run is a full speed training run.

I just do IDPA, but it depends... with a rifle or carbine... its not so bad, but with a pistol at anything beyond 10yrds its fairly difficult depending on how fast you walk and which direction your walking relative to the target.

We were taught the "combat glide" which is something like a fast walk that's tactical and lets you engage targets at about 15 (might have been 20) yards without too much trouble. I'm not very good at it or other aspects of "combat shooting". It's very reflex based and counter intuitive after years of having "sight picture" pounded into your head. Your primary goal is to "push" the muzzle of your weapon up onto the target rather than trying to aim through your sights, I presume that red dot scopes help a lot with this. Combat shooting is actually part of the Marine Corps marksmanship course now so reflex shooting across the top of your weapon is a skill that they practice. They're also teaching failure drills and variations (any drill that involves shooting someone in the head, preferably after you've shot them in the chest a few times), a practice that was unheard of a couple years ago. Movement drills where you combat glide from the 15 yard line to the 5 yard line are standard fare for deploying units and are probably going to be added to the qualification course. The targets they use for combat shooting are slightly larger than a man and as long as you hit center mass you're golden (can't remember the size of the black circle in the chest). So erm.. to answer your original question. Yes, it is effective to shoot while on the move as long as you're moving the right way, you practice it a lot, and you're engaging targets at very close distances.

Circle strafing isn't something anyones taught as far as I know though

I've been flat out told not to bother with shooting while running. You're wasting ammo and increasing the chances you're going to shoot yourself or your buddy. Having dicked around with airsoft guns and their pump action brothers I have to agree.

Combat Glide, "slicing the pie", etc. Oddly enough, I'm the opposite I do really bad at the range can't keep the same sight picture to save my live. If I'm moving around and shooting in a MOUT type environment I'm much more accurate.

EDIT- Shooting while running is pretty much a supressive measure you don't tend to do it in the direction you're running but perpendicular in my experience anyway.

Ah, that'd make sense (about the running). In the combat shooting section you have to engage targets that are moving at a slow walk and... yeah, totally sucked at hitting them, even though we were only at the 100 yard line. I can only imagine what would be happen if I was running, when I tried that.

Ah, so you're saying you have a hard time shooting the "traditional" way but you excel at shooting on the move? There's a lot of people like that and I really wish I got more range time so I could practice. Besides, running shoot houses is so much more fun than shooting KD

I really shine when the targets are 300 meters away or more, stationary, roughly man shaped, and high contrast black on white. Oh and the wind can't be blowing more than 5-10 miles an hour across my field. And I have to have at least 30 seconds between shots.

it's a question of how accurate you need to be. are you going to be able to hit a man-sized target at 300y while walking? no, probably not. at best, you're only likely to scare him into ducking instead of shooting at you long enough for you to get to cover. are you going to be able to hit a man-sized target at 50y? maybe so. 25y? probably, assuming you've practiced.

Depending (again) on the ranges and overall situation involved, of course, it's not only "effective" but a very good idea. I can make hits on a man-sized target, while I'm moving at a walk, sidestep, backpedal (or mixture of the three) one handed. Why? Because if I ever do have to draw my CCW, I'm certainly not likely to be in a situation where I'm going to planting my feet, using proper posture, and holding real still so it's easy for the other sum'bitch to shoot me back.

"Get off the X" is common advice, and worth following. Being able to draw and fire while shooting (especially while shooting at the ranges you're likely to run into in a game called "SWAT," sharpshooter notwithstanding) is an absolutely vital skill. A fight's a footrace.

Unless you've already got good cover.... and you're fairly certain the other guy isn't packing grenades.

Other than that I completely agree, the last thing you want to be doing is presenting your opposition with a nice man-sized static target.

For the record I encourage everyone else in the world to present me with nice man-sized static targets, you should also wear bright colors.

Looking over the replies, it seems like what a lot of people are saying is that when you're shooting armed people while you walk you don't really need to hit the black or the 10-ring. You are just looking to hit the paper.

From what I gathered it depends on the range and the weapon you use. At close range with a shotgun, it doesn't really matter if you're running or standing as long as the barrel is more or less toward the target.

Generally speaking, the rule is just "it's better to present a moving target if you can." Generally speaking, the other rule is just "hit the guy." Just like in a fistfight, not everything is going to be a kill shot. But just like in a fistfight, not everything has to be. Sure, it's great if you can pull a two-and-one faster than Tom Cruise's character in Collateral. But if not, there's nothing wrong with hitting the guy somewhere. Sometimes the pain of a gunshot will shock them for the half-second you need to take another shot. Sometimes your bad shot will miss the torso low, sever the artery near the groin, and you'll kill the guy on accident-purpose. Sometimes you'll miss completely, of course (90% of the time for most firefights involving handguns with the NYPD, IIRC), and a bullet will go flying off into some innocent old lady or something -- which is why you never just blast away on the move for fun, and you understand in advance that you're still responsible fo where every shot goes.

But -- yes. It's better to shoot than to get shot. It's better to not get hit than to carefully draw a bead for a kill shot (if you're in a situation where you don't have the time to safely do so). When in doubt, you just aim for the center of mass and shoot 'till the target drops and/or your slide locks back. If you can do so on the move, and if that movement is making the difference between you being overwhelmed by a knife-wielding attacker or shot full of holes by someone else with a gun, well, good for you. It beats standing still and dying while worrying about your stance and grip.


*sigh* I hope you're being funny, but I got into a big fight about this the other day with some knucklehead who's never touched a gun in his life (European kid), but who refused to listen to anyone about it. So I'm gonna rant.

At close range with a shotgun, the shot will spread from being about dime sized (like most bullets) to maybe half-dollar or silver dollar size, instead. Shotguns do not send out explosive cone-shaped wads of death that fill hallways with white-hot shrapnel and don't require any sort of aiming. Yes, they'll leave fantastically impressive-sized holes in things they hit (in much the same way any round leaves a bigger exit wound than the size of the bullet), and they're great close-quarters weapons. But, no, you can't just wave them in generally the right direction and just wait for the burglar to blow up.

Mmm... fantastically large holes. Almost as good as small holes in the front and big holes in the back...

@Wounded Ronin: That's the general principle I was taught. Shooting in the general vicinity of a person while not getting shot is better than "standing still and dying while worrying about your stance and grip." So to answer the original question "You can effectively shoot and scoot. If you know what you're doing and practice."

*points at Critias more thorough investigation into the issue at hand*

Not to derail the thread too much, but every boxing/martial arts coach I've ever interacted with has always said "safety first" in a fistfight; in other words it's more important to have solid defense and not get rocked than it is to go at the other guy like a madman. I believe that would be different than a firefight because individual punches are more survivable/ineffective than rifle rounds.

That being said, I think I get what you're saying. Thank you very much for your insights.

As yet another IDPA shooter and some tactical shooting instruction, the safety first rule still applies. It means get the hell behind cover. 'Slicing the Pie' is the best way to look at it, use cover to shield you while you engage one target at a time. So, a solid defense is the most important, it is you number one advantage.

Well, what I meant by that specific quote was the "not every shot is the KO." Sometimes you're hitting someone just to get their guard to shift, sometimes you're hitting someone just to stun them for a second so you can hit them again, sometimes you're hitting someone to make him drop the knife/club, sometimes you're hitting someone or no other reason than that the opportunity presented itself and you want to poke him in the eye. Not every punch you ever throw will be a perfect shot to the head that will lay him out cold, and not every bullet you fire will be a meticulously aimed piece of pistolwork that pops one into his brainpan.

The "not every punch is a knockout" just came up last week, when we were doing open hand versus a knife. Maybe I walked away remembering the wrong single line of text from it, but the general theory was sometimes you can only defend so much, and your only shot is to keep the other guy busy getting hurt, stun him, keep him on his heels, keep up your own momentum, etc, etc. In some fights you're gonna get bloody, and against some weapons offense just trumps defense, so the longer the fight goes the worse it is for you, period.

Well, with a knife, I'd say definitely. That's a very different animal than a fist and a lot of the tactics that could keep you safe from punches and kicks would go out the window versus the knife. I'd say that if you don't have any tools and you had to fight someone with a knife who uses it intelligently it would really be a Hail Mary and you'd have to commit to a pretty bold all-or-nothing course of action.

Plan A, of course, was made quite clear to us as "point behind him, say 'Look, Bigfoot!' and run away while he's distracted."

Well, okay, he really just taught us the run away part. I made up the Bigfoot part, because we're studying Jeet as much as Kali, and my teacher encourages us to come up with our own variations to every move he teaches us.