Gunfighting and Neuroscience: Why Using Your Front Sight Might Kill You

Success in a gunfight doesn’t depend on how well you shoot. It depends on how well you see. Unfortunately, everyone in the tactical and self defense communities trains endlessly on the mechanics of shooting, while completely ignoring the more important aspects of seeing. In this article we will review some new research that drastically impacts the basics of firearms training.

Many years ago in a universe far far away, I studied psychology. Part of my training for this degree required that I take cognitive psychology, which covers the biology of the brain and body, especially vision systems. This might seem somewhat far afield for psychology, but not all psychologists listen to patients talk about trauma on a couch. Many psychologists spend a career researching perception, cognition and, other aspects of consciousness.

I can say with experience that your perception and vision systems are very complex and even researchers specializing in these areas have much more to study before anything like a complete understanding is achieved. For this article, we will discuss a few of these research concepts such as, attentional control theory, and the neuroscience behind the quiet eye.

Quiet Eye, Sports, and Gunfighting

Long time readers of this website will remember I wrote an article entitled, “Neuroscience, Expert Gunfighters, and the Quiet Eye,” several years ago. In that article I reviewed some cool research where a group of SWAT officers were compared to rookie police officers in a use of force scenario.

During that scenario each group was presented with a shoot or no shoot condition. The researchers fitted each participant with headgear that tracked each officer’s eye movements to examine what exactly they were looking at. They discovered that there was a huge difference in performance, directly attributable to each participant’s quiet eye.

What is the Quiet Eye?

The “quiet eye” is the final fixation on a location that is within 3ᵒ of visual angle for a minimum of 100ms’ (Vickers, 1996). In simpler terms this is a fixed spot that your gaze lingers on prior to executing a task. It could be staring at the rim of a basketball hoop prior to a free throw, or looking at a suspect’s elbow prior to him presenting a firearm.

The quiet eye phenomenon has been associated with expert ability for many years. No matter the area of sporting expertise, they find that the highest performers always exhibit longer and more consistent quiet eye duration. Check out this video which shows how this works for soccer.

Gunfighting Science

You can see that Ronaldo’s vision is much more consistent, in two aspects. First, he looks where the first indication of movement would occur, in the hips. Secondly, he watches that area longer than the non expert he is pitted against. If you read the previous article comparing SWAT officer and rookies, you’ll find the exact same type of behavior.

SWAT officers consistently gazed at areas where a weapon would appear. This allowed them to fixate on the object in the person’s hands for longer periods. This comparatively small difference gave their brain vital hundredths of seconds to determine if the scenario was shoot or no shoot.

When researchers examined rookie officers they found they spent an inordinate amount of time looking at areas that tell you nothing. They looked at the assailant’s face, around the room, and amazingly, they closed their eyes completely before firing in half of the scenarios!

Researchers also found that rookies almost always looked to the sights of their gun prior to firing, around 84% of the time. You might think, great this is what they are trained to do! Well you’re both right and wrong. They are trained to do this, and this is what is getting them killed. In the study they were shot by the assailant 58% of the time!

Less than a quarter of SWAT officers looked at their gun prior to firing. Their skill and experience allowed their quiet eye to track the subject throughout the presentation of their own firearm. This lengthened their cognition time, allowing them to make better shoot no shoot decisions. Some of you might wonder how they could possibly hit the target if they didn’t look at their gun sights? I’m glad you asked.

Expert Sighting Methods, and Novice Sighting Methods

Remember that sights do not make you shoot accurately. They are mechanical devices that allow you to point a weapon with more precision. You can shoot accurately without sights! Cue angry boomer screeching.

I want you to understand that I’m not telling you to avoid using sights. I’m trying to impart some nuance to this discussion. Sights allow you to verify your point of aim. Anyone with significant practice can point a firearm precisely, without focusing on sights. Check out this quick video from National Champion shooter Ben Stoeger.

Ben is shooting a very hard partial target at 25 yards, while not focusing on his front sight. He is doing this because it is faster than looking at the target, looking at the front sight, looking at the rear sight, and then pressing the trigger. He is able to do this because he has millions of rounds and tens of thousands of hours of pistol practice under his belt. New shooters cannot and should not attempt this.

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Less experienced shooters will need a hard focus on their sights to verify their gun is aligned correctly. They do not have the requisite practice time to look at a spot and line the gun up subconsciously. This is fine in a target shooting scenario, but deadly in the real world.

Winning a Gunfight With Quiet Eye

We know that extending the time your eye is quiet on the target prior to shooting gives you a better chance of shooting accurately and making better shoot no shoot decisions. This isn’t just my opinion, this is also the conclusion of this research thesis entitled, “Improving Visual Processing During Deadly Force Encounters and Recommendations for Officer Training.”

This is a 50 page research review on visual image processing, quiet eye research, and application to real world engagements. It’s definitely worth a read, but I’ll highlight some of the key points here.

The author of the paper highlights the importance of the quiet eye and discusses how this intersects with your brains ability to pay attention in stressful situations.

He states that having an external focus, such as looking at the spot where a weapon is likely to appear, actually lowers physiological stress, including your heart rate. This reduction in stress also allows you to make better shooting decisions. As your stress goes up, your ability to use fine motor skills and your ability to detect non threat items is impaired. Scared people are trigger happy, and less accurate.

Research Based Gunfighting

The author recommends that we stop teaching people to look to their gun prior to shooting. This is breaking their quiet eye, and increasing lethal errors both for the shooter, and for people who should not have been shot. He also recommends that we identify expert gaze patterns, and teach those to less experienced shooters.

This all boils down to a few concrete training recommendations. First, we need to track new shooter’s gaze patterns and compare them to experts. For example, there are only a few areas where a weapon is going to be presented, and eventually all weapons will be in the attacker’s hands. Moreover, there are indicators, such as a high elbow position, that will indicate someone is drawing a weapon. These experiential indicators need to be shown, and drilled so newer shooters understand where to look.

Developing Quiet Eye Through Practice

Next they need to practice both live and dry fire until they can look to a spot, maintain their gaze and automatically align their sights through the duration of the trigger press. This can be done with iron sights, but it is much easier to accomplish with a pistol mounted red dot sight.

It goes without saying that the basics of shooting, such as grip, sight alignment and trigger control still need to be taught. All shooters still need to focus on their front sight when they are learning and when the difficulty of the shot requires a more precise sight picture. That does not mean advanced shooters need to have a crisp front sight picture for all engagements!

Realistically this will require an investment in training time, and more resources to fully execute. Here are some more practical methods of increasing your gunfighting ability.

Practical Training Methods

First, you should try competition shooting. Check out this guide to getting started in USPSA. Shooting in competitions will drastically increase your gun handling skills, and it will increase the speed at which your vision works.

Most importantly, you need to dry fire. This is what will increase your quiet eye the most. This allows you to point the gun and manipulate it unconsciously. Remember, you only have so much bandwidth in stressful situations. If it’s taken up trying to draw your gun, look at your sights and look at your target, then you are already behind the curve. With practice it can feel like the gun presents itself while you watch the assailant.

This why many people that have survived gunfights report operating on “autopilot.” Their brain could do the physical movements without conscious thought, allowing them to solve the tactical problem at hand. All it takes is practice. Now what are you waiting for? Get out there and start training!