Really interesting to read his training history. Apparently when he was at the police academy, Jelly Bryce's style of hip shooting was taught for shooting inside 10 yards. Jelly was an amazing shot and gunfighter, but put a ton of practice into what he did. The author rightly points out that hip shooting is difficult to master and takes a lot of practice. But there are some issues with the discussion as point shooting includes both hip shooting and instinctive shooting... but hip shooting and instinctive shooting are not the same thing. Here is scientific research on the topic of "instinctive shooting": FSI Study: The Surprising Deadly Threat Of Firearms Novices.
New Tests Show Deadly Accuracy & Startling Speed Even Inexperienced Shooters Can Achieve:Overall, while it is possible that the high percentage of
hits to the head area by the novice shooters could be
explained by a novice looking over the firearm sights,
which would tend to create high hits, the high number of
head hits suggest the individuals naturally point the firearm
where the are looking - at the head. This begs the question
regarding police officer firearms training and the current
practice to fire at center body mass at minimal distances:
Is this the best point of aim and is this training counterintuitive
to natural instinct? Therefore, it is recommended
that further research and investigation be aimed at answering
whether this training forces the officer to spend precious
additional time to re-focus and shoot toward an
area that is not one of normal or instinctual visual focus?
As COL Applegate discovered during WW2, instinctive shooting is real, requires less training, and it does work for common situations (most especially inside 7 yards). It is ironic that it took Force Science over 60 years to rediscover what COL Applegate documented back in the 1940s.An overwhelming majority of the test subjects used point shooting at all
distances when firing rapidly, and almost all used 1-handed techniques at close
ranges. At 5-7 yards and beyond, many shifted spontaneously to 2-hand
stances, with an increase in hit probability noted.
Even though point shooting, the volunteers still tended to extend their arms fully
and bring the gun up to eye level. “Rarely did they use a combat tuck,” Avery
said. “Even at 1 yard, they tended to extend their arm to shoot.”