In just about every "typical" situation muzzle-down leads to better outcomes than up.
I'll let Kyle lay it out.
WARNING:
Apparently this fired me up, rant below:
Disagree. A quick search here for "combat glide" will yield several posts I've made over the years talking about my experience as an instructor working to update our tactics - one of my favorite anecdotes. Previously (since the mid-80's when modern CQB TTP's were "originally" being developed by 1st Force, LAPD SWAT, and CAG) guys would train this tactic to isolate bounce (caused by walking) to the lower half of the body. This was traditionally trained by hanging weight around your neck, and holding something between your knees. You'd bend waaaay forward at the waist and treat your body like a tank turret from the waist up, treads from the waist down.
To be fair, this actually works. A trained combat glider will have tighter patterns while shooting on the move than someone just diddy-bopping their way downrange. Great.
But it only works by 'working' against the way the human body actually operates. It's all muscle tension all day. This quickly leads to fatigue, shakes, and jacked up necks. Our bodies are designed to operate a certain way. Upright. Many lessons have been learned in recent years, largely coming out of professional athletics, the scientific study of body mechanics, ergonomics, and kinesiology. Learning these lessons and applying them to shooting on the move led to a very different body posture. One that exploits the way the body actually works and takes advantage of it, rather than fighting against it.
All else being equal, someone who masters shooting on the move in the new way will be more proficient than someone who does the combat glide. Full stop. The combat glide is measurably worse. Sure, guys can get very good at it, and many have. I've got at least a couple hundred hours combat gliding. I know we don't want to offend people, but TTP's matter - it's literally life and death. It's not a matter of opinion, with all opinions equally valid.
There are of course any number of imaginable scenarios where a muzzle-up ready makes sense over muzzle-down, I mean, we live in a world of infinite possibility. But the reality is, that in most typical scenarios that we train for, a muzzle-down ready is measurably better.
Paul's line at 3:08 is insightful, and speaks to something that happens a lot and really bugs me. I was always that annoying kid in my military schools who wanted to actually understand, and not just memorize by rote, what we were "learning". Yeah, my hand was often up. Most of the time, if I asked a probing question (
why does that work, what's the theory, where did that come from, etc.) got groans and another regurgitation of the script the instructors had memorized (here's looking at you TRADOC with actual, literal scripts). Why? Because they didn't know. They didn't understand the material, they had just memorized it.
That kind of shallow "understanding" doesn't equip anyone to extend their knowledge, or develop something new, or adapt it to new situations. It's brittle. But it's also sticky. When folks like me catch flak for daring to try to understand what we're supposedly being taught, it teaches other to shut the hell up and just go along with it. And with that kind of a culture, the rationale behind things gets lost real quick. In the time it takes for a single person to rotate, that info can die.
[little text in square brackets in the following paragraph are 'for examples']
It may well be that thing "x"
[control over fine motor movement degrades under stressful conditions, detailed finger manipulations like surgery or tying a fly are fine motor movements] being taught is correct and great. Then something (the world, technology, whatever) changes, and "x" is no longer relevant as a result - or "x" just get's misapplied
[sweeping your thumb forward after an AR-style magazine exchange to release the bolt is finger stuff - must be a fine motor movement right? better not do that, slap that bolt release with your palm!]. But if no one around knows why "x" was being taught in the first place or any of the background info
[actually, that is NOT a fine motor movement - not everything with fingers is (after all, we somehow retain the ability to pull triggers under stress without resorting to slapping them with our whole hand), also the M-16 and derivatives were intentionally designed such that the bolt release is within easy reach of the typical user's thumb when grasping the magazine well], then no one is equipped to challenge or change it. "x" then becomes an article of faith, tradition, or tribal signaling
[look at that dumb boot using his thumb, clearly hasn't received our training] (hmmm, only one group in a large and varied community uses a particular iconic and cool-looking technique that is otherwise largely discredited?).
I somehow continue to be galled by how willing the military at large is to accept group think and politically/socially motivated judgements (but the General said...., don't want to offend so-and-so)
when DEATH is on the line. Hubris.
Hijack/rant OVER.