I've been pondering the idea of a "finished" gunfighter for the last couple of days. Here's my take on the idea (whether this is anywhere close to what Mr. Keith was talking about I don't know):

I'll start by saying that my emphasis is on the word gunfighter. I'm not talking about someone works in an office or someone who wants to be a Grand Master.

There will come a time when you're done making the "big" leaps in your skillset. Your gun handling and marksmanship are solid. You don't get thrown by weather, movement, awkward positions or a shot timer beeping in your ear. You can run your gun.

Just as an example, let's say a guy can shoot a 7 sec El Prez clean, from concealment, on demand. 1.5sec draw, 2 sec reload and the rest of the time spent shooting 12 "A" zone hits. Now, this guy can spend the time doing more work to get faster on that drill. Work to get that draw time and reload time down a couple of tenths of a second, the shot to shot splits down a couple of hundredths of a second, etc.

To this shooter I would ask two questions;

At what point are you turning a drill into a range trick? We all know that if you shoot the same qual or the same drill over and over again you're going to get better and more comfortable with it. But you're also going to start training your mind to expect that sequence of events. (six shots, reload, six shots) What happens when you need three or four to put someone down? What happens when you work multiple targets and still have rounds in your gun? Ultimately, are you training yourself to shoot faster than you can think?

My second question would be what other skills are you sacrificing for that incremental improvement? Comms knowledge? Combatives? (Family life?)

I still don't know where I'm going to land on this idea. Just thinking out loud (or typing my thoughts as it were).