Every Gun Has A Brain
Understanding the brain is key to effective training. (Hint: It’s between your ears)
I recently wrote about the need for better firearms training, and proposed an approach for improving it. But any systematic training approach ultimately seeks to put techniques into the students brain in a way that they can be recalled and executed correctly when needed. Research has shown that the typical training methods fail to accomplish this.
An excellent podcast, The Squad Room, had a recent interview with Dustin Solomon discussing his book Building Shooters. The podcast and the book are oriented to law enforcement and military professionals, but the lessons apply to everyone with a gun and a brain, especially those who want to improve their skills or those of others. The podcast is very good and worth spending an hour by anybody who struggles with erratic shooting performance. The book is fairly short but richly detailed with practical suggestions for improving training performance.
I started this article with the intention of summarizing Dustin’s book. But, the book is very informative and even a decent summary quickly became unwieldy. So I reduced the article to addressing his motivations, with a brief biology lesson and hopefully enough support information to justify his conclusions. I’ve endured a lot of training, but have never been responsible for managing it. So I don’t want to pretend to have any expertise in training. But the book seems authoritative, and it is my hope that trainers will be able to adopt some of Dustin’s methods and, perhaps, improve my training. If you have questions, leave a comment and I’ll try to characterize Dustin’s analysis better. But the truly curious will enjoy reading his book.
The training challenge is reflected in Dustin’s observation that America spends billions teaching young people (who actually have more malleable brains than adults) seven hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years, how to communicate effectively. They routinely fail.
But, we expect a four hour firearms class to produce meaningful training. The book describes why the brain requires different training methods than are typically provided. Most training is oriented to meeting a standard at the end of a session. Standard training is effective for this, but memories fade more quickly after traditional training than with training optimized for long term retention of the lessons.
A hypothetical case was constructed, based on research data, using basketball players training with drills. One approach, called blocked training, had the players cycle through a series of shooting drills (basketballs only!) sequentially, representing standard training, and other players mixing the drills with tactical scenarios, called interleaved training. The performance was better at the end of the session for the traditional blocked drills, but 30 days later, performance was better for the alternate interleaved drills, and was much better in actual game performance.
Those who need to be able to expertly handle a deadly weapon, or possibly survive combat with lethal attackers, need different training than methodically firing a box of ammo at a fixed paper target while standing in a booth at the local range. Even the tactical training provided for more advanced shooters overloads the brains of the students, possibly reducing their long term capabilities.
Shooting requires a variety of skills, each using different mental processes and benefitting from different training processes. So assembling a training program that maximizes operational expertise long after the class adjourns, or includes engagements different than the training, requires different training approaches. Assembling these into a comprehensive training program depends on identifying objectives and matching them with optimized training methods. Even this introductory book becomes fairly complicated.
The traditional training methods use repetition to develop “muscle memory.” But the muscles have no memory. Memories are all in the brain. The brain is an assembly of cells called neurons which interconnect to perform various functions. They’re very much like a modern computer, with a central processor and memory chips that work together to operate programs that define its performance. Conventional training treats it like a box, where the instructor inserts new programs and the student retrieves them when needed. We see the results of that going wrong every day.
Anyone who touches a firearm invokes onerous rules, public fear, and limitless liability. Guns are just tools, but they carry a stigma different than any other tool we can choose. Every user needs to understand this tool very well, and use it skillfully, but they are frequently misused. Correct use requires good training, better than most gun owners actually receive. It is imperative that we make significant improvements in the way gun owners are trained, both to improve their performance and to increase public confidence. Traditional training has contributed to the current legal maze and public fear. Modern science can improve that training. Improved training will reduce public fear of guns and people who use them.
Memory retention is a complex process, still not fully understood, but is layered with short term memory being limited in size and durability. Short term memories are easily overwritten by additional lessons encountered before the memories are transferred to longer term storage. After ten minutes, proteins are synthesized that construct firmer memory paths, but are still vulnerable to disruption and interference for five to 24 hours. Then we begin a multi phase process of constructing memories in longer term memory structures. These memories can be reinforced by further use, or emotional associations. Use it or lose it is an apt slogan.
A four hour class at the range is in short term memory and needs reinforcement to be firmly imprinted in long term memory.
Dustin’s approach is summarized in the book. It begins with an overview of brain operations, describes how memories are established, and details twelve factors involved in learning. Then he goes through fairly detailed description of his curriculum development model used to maximize learning. The important conclusions are detailed in Chapter 11 with four general recommendations and five more specific restructuring recommendations which can be directly incorporated into existing training programs.
If you wondered why you left that last class with a jumble of concepts in your mind, try this exercise — see if you can reproduce the lessons. Write them down in a list after the class, and again a month later. Truly learning new skills requires that we adapt the learning to the biology of our brains. Our brains evolved over millions of years. We’re not going to make them adapt to our training program. We’ll do better if we adapt our training to fit our brains.