U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Recently, I wrote a piece explaining a course of fire known as the Dicken Drill. This is a rough approximation of the shooting which stopped the killer at the Greenwood, Indiana, mall just a few weeks ago. This incident was followed by a wave of people recreating Eli Dicken’s actions, uploading pictures and videos of their attempts at the Dicken Drill to see how they stack up to the man himself.
In the days following this drill going viral, I’ve been seeing folks online chastising those shooting the Dicken Drill. Reasons range from us not actually knowing the specifics of the shooting to allowances for misses, and even hate for people suddenly being interested in shooting at ranges past 3/5/7/25/etc yards. Some of these criticisms are valid; others, not so much, in my opinion.
(Un)acceptable Misses in the Dicken Drill
I think the biggest issue I take with most versions of the Dicken Drill is the acceptance of two misses since Eli made two misses himself. We are accountable for every round that leaves our firearm, even if its use is righteous. Folks are scoffing at the two misses because they hit nothing of importance by pure luck. If those two rounds hit innocent bystanders, whether directly or after passing through walls, I feel that many wouldn’t find this to be as big of a win as it is portrayed, and we likely wouldn’t be developing drills based on the incident.
This isn’t to disparage Eli Dicken, he did excellent work that day and is undoubtedly a hero. However, we should be striving to perform better, and misses do not align with
