Once you’re past a basic level of shooting you’re going to run into the Mozambique Drill, otherwise known as the Failure to Stop Drill. The saying is “Two to the body, one to the head, they’re dead.” Montana Tactical Firearms Instruction has a great video up on a failure to stop drill, which is very important for concealed carry permit holders.

Travis mentions that we’re shooting to stop, not to kill. I don’t like the Mozambique Drill terminology because I can imagine a prosecutor quoting that “Two to the body” nonsense in an attempt to frame the situation as looking for an opportunity to kill someone. “You didn’t stop shooting because you wanted to kill them!”

A weakness of these failure to stop drills is that we’re usually training with the clock running, so the transition between A-zone body and the head is automatic. If you’re doing it right, there’s no difference in the speed between the A-zone hits and the next hit to the head. Just let the recoil carry you upward until the dot is on the head and “if it fits it ships.” The problem is that in real life we’ll need some time to evaluate whether we’ve gotten a stop before moving to the head shot.

Perhaps a way to train for this would be to run the normal course of fire for the A-zone, pause, and then have your partner either fire a round at their own target or call “down.” That would mean you’d have to stop and evaluate something before automatically moving to the head.

I’d love to hear other people’s thinking on how to train so that the follow up to the head shot isn’t just an automatic coup-de-grace.