Situational Awareness Training When Working with Firearms

When personal safety becomes a top priority people often immediately think about the tools they need to defend themselves, a gun, taser, bat, big dog, alarm system, etc.  But each of these are physical tools that are meant to deter or respond at the last moment when the threatening situation is already underway.  All of that is great and having the tools on hand when the moment strikes is totally necessary, but people don’t go from being a regular civilian to John Wick on command.  In fact, when that threatening moment arrives, skills plummet, humans do not rise to the occasion like the movies show, they fall to their lowest level of operational knowledge.  That is why as you delve into the world of personal safety you will often hear that “the best defense is don’t be there in the first place”.

Personal safety uses tools to accomplish tasks but understanding the concepts behind it and getting training on the intellectual portion is what sets a person up for success and safety.  These soft skills are what allow you to stay out of trouble and hopefully never need to pick up that gun or hear that alarm go off.  

While learning to defend yourself with martial arts, blunt or edged tools, and firearms is necessary it represents 10% of the overall situation, it applies when the fight is on.  The other 90% is where soft skills are utilized to never end up in the physical altercation at all.  This sentiment is expressed with the term left of bang, the ability to proactively make decisions to avoid undesirable situations.  When we are left of bang we have more time and options to avoid the bad situation with much less effort than if we wait till the fight.

How do we learn and hone those soft skills?  What can we do to avoid or mitigate the bad situation before it happens?  What systems and concepts have been developed and proven to work?  Fortunately, there are some very good and easy to understand ways that have been developed.  The most notable of which is situational awareness.

Cooper’s Color Code

Col. Jeff Cooper believed that your mindset was your primary weapon and the base foundation that combat preparedness is built on.  His goal was to use competence rather than chance to increase the probability of survival.  In his effort to nurture this mindset in all safety minded individuals he published information on not only how to operate firearms but how to mentally prepare and respond to potentially dangerous actions.

One of his most notable contributions is the Color Code.  This gives us an easy system to gauge our environment and classify its safety level.   Based on what is observed in our surroundings, how people are acting, what is in their hands, and our gut feeling we can shift between the colors and know what mindset should be engaged.

Using the Color Code comes down to observation skills.  Being in Yellow allows you to go about your life as normal, just with an awareness of your surroundings.  It is a simple concept to understand but takes some time to train your mind and continuously apply.  Check out this article to get you started with some simple exercises and games to nurture this mindset and how to combine situational awareness with dry fire to up the ante. 

Now that you have a way to rate your surroundings, how can you manage that in our large and fast paced world?

Divide the Environment

When we go out in the world we encounter many different environments and the amount of people, items, and activity going on is always changing.  It can feel overwhelming to be situationally aware of everything all the time, however by dividing up the space it can become more easily managed.

Divide the space into foreground, midground, and background rings, what is behind you is just as important as what is in front.  divide_the_environment.jpg Infographic Copyright © 2021 Security Adviser

The foreground is the immediate space around you and is where you have the least amount of time to solve the problem and generally have to react.  

The midground is out a bit further, halfway between the foreground and background and gives a little more time to process and solve the problem but still requires a quick response, remember an average person can cover 21 feet in 1.5 seconds.  

Furthest out is the background, and affords more time to observe and respond to threats.  It also gives information on possible escape routes or scouting for cover/concealment, and the possibility of identifying high speed potential threats that can quickly move from background to foreground like motorized vehicles or distance weapons like a firearm.

Based on these divisions we can assess any mental triggers (“if they do x, then I do y”), what our proxemics are (distance we allow between us and another person), and how to apply the tools at hand based on skill level.  

Remember that distance equals time, and time allows us to act rather than react.  It is important to be aware of your surroundings, observe the people and environment not only for threats but also for improvised weapons and escape routes.  This gives us information that sets up a successful defense, and a savvy defender will have already decided several courses of action and then should the need arise chooses from those predetermined actions.  All of this speeds up the process of defending ourselves. However there is one other innate quality everyone can use for situational awareness, intuition.

Intuition

Developing situational awareness and using it as a personal security radar is a skill but everyone starts with the baseline of intuition.  We are still animals and if you listen there is an instinctual feel to danger.  Of course our five senses give us the primary information to assess our surroundings but if for any reason you feel that something isn’t quite right, listen to it.  

Monitoring your internal environment can be done by thinking of a traffic light, it gives an internal barometer with three states to classify into.  

Green is the baseline of how the environment makes you feel, identifying a baseline means that changes can be noticed.  

Yellow is that noticeable change, something has caught your attention or what is often referred to as a “gut feeling” it isn’t specific but it’s there.  

Red is when fear starts to surface, the internal warning system is ringing the bells and you just know something bad is about to happen.

Any anomaly in the environment deserves your attention and assessment.  When being situationally aware you must read the environment and take in the relevant information.  The more you understand about how to use your mind to stay safe the easier it is to be aware.

Apply What You Know  

The next time you are out in public try to apply these concepts, just one at a time, and see how long you can remember to check in with the new tool.  

If you go to the grocery store, can you observe those around you and as you go from the aisles to the perimeter change the definition of foreground, midground, and background with the physical space.  

The next time you are out at a festival or concert you can feel how the baseline changes depending on how close you are to the main event.  The seats close to the front of a concert are going to have an entirely different feel to the concessions stand.

When you leave a store and exit to the parking lot, take a pause to observe what is going on and visualize a situation in which you encounter someone loitering near your car, pre-decide your actions of what you could do.

Incorporate this high level thinking into your dry fire with decision making drills like Hunt or Bells in Laser Academy.  Once you feel comfortable adding some thought process into your dry fire, get creative and engage observational and decision making skills with the drill. 

If you watch some action, scary, and drama shows and movies, use them as the observational window, set up a target by the TV and use the discussed concepts to determine how you would act given the same situation.  Reason out what the character did and how it could have been prevented with situational awareness, follow along and explore the different ways using these concepts. For a walk through example take a look at this breakdown using the move “The Call” from 2013.  

Carrying a firearm has a lot of responsibility, more than just marksmanship, but many people don’t take the time to look at the 90% preceding the incident.  Marksmanship is important, and you are accountable for every round, but wouldn’t you rather have the skill and not need it?  As good of a shot as you may be, the best defense is still…don’t be there.