If you are like me, I would venture to say that at least a half-dozen of your friends sent you a link to mobile phone videos from Montreal, Canada that show a female police officer being startled and shooting an innocent bystander on the street.
We could spend hours dealing with the state of modern policing and the penalties that citizens are paying for DEI hiring practices. However, watching the videos taken by bystanders of the recent Montreal incident prompted another conversation about cover, concealment and tactics that I believe will be beneficial.
What is Cover?
For my part, I was first introduced to the official definition of cover as; Any material that can be expected to protect you from incoming small arms fire. I learned that during a four-day defensive handgun course taught by John Farnam in 1986. John advised us that we need to always be “cover conscious,” aware enough of our surroundings to rapidly identify potential cover. Another fundamental tactic we learned was that, “If you realize you’re in a gunfight and you aren’t behind cover, your feet need to be moving.”
In the Marine Corps infantry, we naturally spent a lot of time considering the use of cover and concealment (concealment being anything that prevents the enemy from seeing you). Cover can also be concealment, but concealment is not cover.
Fundamentals of Cover
I thought the fundamentals of the use of cover were rather set in stone twenty years ago. However, I failed to take into account the demonic creation of socialist media and the advent of the Youtube gun influencer.
For instance, for decades, we taught students not to crowd cover (stay at least a full arms length back) or lean on or around cover. That advice was sound and we didn’t question it until gun influencers decided to make videos telling their viewers to go ahead and lean on/lay over their cover material in order to get better split times.
There are two primary reasons why we teach students not to crowd their cover and both are based on proper tactics. First, when students lean on or lay over cover (like car hoods) they always expose more of their body to incoming fire than is necessary to make a shot. The prime goal of using cover is to not get shot and to then use the time while you’re not getting shot to take a shot at the bad guy.
The second reason you shouldn’t crowd your cover is because it reduces your overall situational awareness. When you get sucked into cover and are trying to make your body one with the barricade, your field of vision is drastically reduced. This isn’t a new concept and we’ve been discussing this for years and years. When you watch the video of the Montreal shooting you can answer the question for yourself as to whether the officer in question was using her cover correctly.
All Cover is Temporary
When we teach the fundamental principle of all cover being temporary, we have two primary examples. First, certain things that seem like good cover are only partial or temporary cover. Automobile bodies are the perfect example.
The standard construction of a modern car will slow down incoming fire and may stop some of it, but it won’t stop it all. There are plenty of videos online showing various calibers defeating one or both sides of a car. Crouching behind an open car door is one of the most deceptive types of cover. You feel safe, but that door isn’t going to stop much for very long. So, the first part of the “temporary” portion is material that can be defeated by an enemy hammering away at it.
The second part of the temporary equation is that even if the cover is rock solid, like the giant concrete planter on the street corner the Montreal cops were crouching behind, given ample time, your enemy will always circumvent that cover and come at you from another angle.
We remind our students that all cover is temporary in order to prevent the mentality that says “I’m safe now” because you’re behind cover material. Use of cover is a tactic that allows you small amounts of time where you’re being shielded from incoming fire in order to make decisions. Amongst these decisions are, how can I get a shot on that guy? Or, if you can’t get a shot on him, where can I move to in order to improve my position?
Never Re-emerge/Re-appear in the Same Place
The problem with practicing the use of cover is that far too many folks don’t do it with the mental picture that someone out there (down range) is looking for something to shoot at. An additional cover principle is to never re-appear or re-emerge from a spot where you just were. That is, if you shoot around cover and then drop back behind it, you should never pop back out in the same place. It doesn’t take a tactical genius to see you duck behind cover and point at that same spot, waiting for you to reappear. That’s exactly what happened during the Norco Bank Robbery.
The police chased heavily armed, fleeing bank robbers into a national forest. The bad guys eventually ran out of road and bailed out.
The officer who was closest behind them jumped out of his unit and immediately opened fire, striking one of the bad guys. That officer retreated to cover behind his car. After firing the remaining rounds from his revolver, he ducked down and reloaded. Two other officers were closing from behind and witnessed the lone officer drop behind cover, reload, and then pop back up to fire from the same position where he had just been.
The bank robbers watched, waited, and when the officer reappeared, they shot and killed him.. For all of his valiant effort, this officer died because he made one mistake. He violated a basic rule of cover. That was a tragic situation, but it’s one from which we can learn.
Where Do We Learn to Use Cover?
The use of cover is a tactic and it has to be practiced if we have any hope of using it correctly under the stress of a life-and-death situation. Now we must ask, from where do we learn to use cover?
Sadly, most people who don’t attend training because they “already know how to shoot” get all of their use of cover training from the movies and TV. When Hollywood shows their heroes using cover, it’s almost always so they can film some kind of monologue or discussion between two protagonists. Rarely, if ever, do the bad guys in a movie flank and kill the good guys while they’re lying behind cover having a conversation.
I know someone is squirming in their seat right now and wants to yell out “Heat! What about Heat?” at their phone or computer screen. Yes, the bounding use of cover scenes portrayed in the 1995 movie Heat have been actually used as a training tool in professional tactics schools. Even the Marine Corps uses it. It was that good.
Heat aside, the best way to actually learn to execute proper cover tactics is to attend a training course that teaches them and stresses the fundamentals. Left to their own devices, most people won’t follow the rules. The primal brain thinks that the best way to use cover is to become one with it or that getting behind cover means that you’re now “safe” and just need to stay there until someone takes care of the armed bad guy problem. Neither of those are good ideas or tactically sound.
Is taking training and learning how to properly make use of cover so as to not be shot something you need to do? Do you carry a gun everyday? The choice is yours.
Paul G. Markel is a combat decorated United States Marine veteran. He is also the founder of Student the Gun University and has been teaching Small Arms & Tactics to military personnel, police officers, and citizens for over three decades.