The Orland Park gas-station video looks like magic. It is not. It is awareness, a staged hand, and reps you already paid for before anyone pointed a gun at you.
The surveillance video from the Shell station in Orland Park on September 15 is making the rounds for a reason. A man in a hood and a mask walks up on a customer pumping gas, produces a firearm, and tries to run an armed robbery. The customer is already watching. His hand goes to the gun. John Correia at Active Self Protection timed the first shot at about 0.6 seconds. Call it under a second. That is fast enough to be true and fast enough to fool people into thinking they would do the same thing because they own a pistol.
This is definitely not true. Unless you have done the three things that video does not show: training and practice before the bad situation, set up your concealed carry rig to present the gun the same way every time, and the boring work that makes a fast first shot a trained response instead of a prayer.
This is not another discussion about gear. You can find that discussion at What Gun Should I Buy. If the pistol, the holster, the belt, and the medical kit are not a settled system, stop here and go fix that. A sloppy holster adds time you do not have. A holster that wiggles on the belt puts the grip in a different place every draw. I’m not arguing about brand, I really don’t care about the brand holster or firearm you prefer as long as they are good quality and work.
This is also not a rewrite of the mindset piece, but you can find that at So You’ve Got the Gear … Now What?. Cooper’s color code still sits at the top of the stack. White is how you get robbed at a pump. Yellow is how you notice a masked man crossing the lot with purpose. Orange is the hand on the gun before the muzzle is in your face. Red is the transition, draw, and the shot. The Orland Park customer was not in White. He won that fight, and did it without injury, because he was situationally aware. He was inside the bad guy’s OODA loop. Training without that habit is a hobby IF you intend to carry a gun for self-defense.
But this meme is absolutely true
What basic carry training is for
If you carry every day, you need a real class, not a certificate you framed. Illinois made this man get a CCL. I am not advocating for state mandated training and licensing. I am advocating for you getting the training that will make you competent while carrying a gun every day. A decent concealed-carry course should leave you with four things:
A safe draw from concealment on your body, on your belt, the way you actually dress.
A clear understanding of when deadly force is lawful and moral.
Enough marksmanship that you can put a round in an A-zone at conversational distance without thinking about the trigger.
The humility to know a classroom is not a robbery.
If your “training” was a morning in a church basement and a laminated card, you have a license. Go find a good trainer with real world experience. If they don’t appear fit, find a different trainer.
Daily Dry Fire
This is the work that produces this video. It is also the work almost nobody does after week three.
What it looks like: you unload and clear the pistol and put all live ammunition in another room. You put on the holster on the belt you use for concealed carry and wear a shirt you actually conceal with. Draw. Present. Press. Reset. Holster the gun. Do it slow. Make it the same every time. Then add a par time and start going faster.
How much: five to ten minutes most days. Twenty good draws beat a hundred sloppy ones. If you only have five minutes, do five perfect presentations and stop.
Why: the first shot in a robbery is not a marksmanship problem. It is a motor-path problem. You are building the same master grip, the same garment clear, the same trigger press, so that when the brain is busy with a mask and a gun the hands already know the job. Dry fire is cheap. It is also the only way to get the reps a live range will not give you on a weeknight.
And trust me, when the adrenaline dumps into your system, you ARE going to forget everything. You will have tunnel vision, your hands will sweat, your heart rate will hit 150. This is why the mechanics of drawing that gun have to be built into your muscle memory and your body just has to do it. Which is why we add a clock with a buzzer.
You need a clock that has a buzzer. It’s going to teach you to react to the stress of the situation without thinking about the actions. Three options that actually work:
PACT Club Timer III. Reasonable money, simple, does what a timer is for. Use it for both dry and live training.
IPSC Shot Timer on a phone. This is fine for dry fire in the house. Phones at a live range are a pain. Leave that app at home when you go shoot.
Mantis. The Mantis X10 ecosystem is the full meal. If you only want the pistol sensor, the Mantis X2 is under $100 and will tell you the truth about your press.
Your timer can beep at the 2 seconds that we know you need to beat in a real defensive gun use. If you are not beating the beep on a training draw, you most certainly are not going to be under 2 seconds in a real situation. Which is the standard you must meet based on the data we have about defensive gun use.
Monthly live fire, at least
Dry fire builds the pathways in your muscles and brain. And then live fire confirms that AND teaches you what it takes to hit the A zone of a target.
What it looks like: the carry gun, the carry holster, the carry belt, the ammunition you would actually use or a close practice analog. Concealment on. Not a race gun from a range bag. If the Range you are using won’t let you draw from the holster, then start at a compressed ready, present the gun and shoot. Take 1 second off the par times to account for not having to build a grip, draw, and compress to horizontal.
This is my standard live fire session with my current EDC pistol. These are the times I work against. If you’ve never done these kind of drills, start with much more time than me. Do a Mozambique or Bill Drill in 6 seconds, not 3. Really advanced shooters can do these drills in 2 seconds. Good shooters prepared for the real world should get the drills done in 3 seconds. New shooters in the 3.5 to 6 second range.
Sig Sauer P365XL - 5x12 rd magazines
Mag 1: warmup - slow, aimed fire, with full grip and sight picture resets
Mag 2-4: 12x Mozambique Drills …. Buzzer to T-zone = 3s
Mag 5: 2x Bill Drills … Buzzer to shot 6 = 3s
Use a shot timer. Use a target that looks like a person. You are not training to punch a baseball-sized hole in a square because an influencer did it for the camera. You are training for FIBS: Fuck I’ve Been Shot. It’s the hit that makes a man decide he has been shot and that the fight is no longer worth it. That lives in the A-zone and the T-zone of a full-size silhouette.
My preferred target is Action Target’s F-TQ15ANT. Any honest full-size silhouette with scored A and T zones will do. At seven yards, you should be able to put every shot in the A-zone. If you cannot do that on demand, you do not have a speed problem. You have a shooting problem.
Write the times down. If you do not write them down you will remember the good string and forget the one where the shirt ate the sight.
Once a month is the floor for someone who carries daily. Twice a month is better. A class every year keeps you from inventing your own doctrine in the garage.
The standard that matters
Do not train to the YouTube number. Correia’s 0.6 is what a prepared man did against a gun already out, after he had already staged his hand. That is elite human performance and you are training for a standard that makes a defensive gun use survivable.
Train to this: from concealment, on a timer, first shot in two seconds or less, A-zone hit at seven yards. As you can see from my EDC training session, I am working on buzzer to draw to first shot under 2 seconds and two more shots under 3 seconds total. That is a really solid standard for defensive gun use. Most people who carry cannot do two seconds with an A zone hit. They have never timed it. But they have a story about how fast they would be.
The Orland Park customer had already done the work you cannot see. Heads up. Hand on the gun. A holster that presented. A press that found the A zone while another muzzle was in the problem. That is not gear. That is not a comment-section personality. That is training and mindset, paid for in advance.
If you carry, go time a draw this week. Then you will know. Until then you do not.
Modern Minuteman
Practical preparedness for everyday citizens.
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