OFF THE WIRE
rom my earliest days of training beyond the fundamentals of shooting,
I recall being taught that cover is better than concealment and that
the most valuable tactic is gaining cover. As with many things I was
taught as doctrine, I now say “maybe.”
Concealment is basically a visual concept. If the best way to win a
fight is to avoid it, concealment may be a useful means to avoid or
escape a fight. It may also allow you to move unseen to a position of
advantage in a fight that you cannot avoid. Concealment is also pretty
much an all-or-none proposition – if your foot is sticking out beyond
the side of what you thought was concealment or if your shadow projects
beyond it, your assailant may notice that you’re there. Similarly, if
you’re trying to move your children unseen, from their bedrooms to
yours, and scrape your gun or flashlight against the wall, you may have
lost the concealment that the wall had provided you.
Okay, but there’s still a wall between you and the intruder – does it
provide cover? I can’t recall how many photos I’ve seen in magazines
and books depicting a homeowner “taking cover” in the doorway to his
bedroom or behind the bed. In this field, cover is defined as something
that stops bullets. Most interior walls, unless struck where the stud is
located, will not even stop .22’s reliably and most mattresses consist
largely of air between the springs.
While cover will usually provide concealment, it may not always.
Think of the Lexan panels or bullet resistant windows found in some
banks and businesses. They provide a measure of cover but no
concealment. I say “measure of cover” because something that stops
common handgun bullets may not stop a bullet from a centerfire rifle.
And, as I pointed out to one former employer, that “bulletproof” window
may stop a centerfire handgun bullet but the wall surrounding it may
not. Also worth noting is that, unlike with concealment, there is such a
thing as partial cover – optimally over your most crucial organs.
My early training taught me that cover is superior to concealment. It
may be on a battlefield, where there may be indirect fire, shrapnel
from artillery shells, etc. On the street, however, a good friend once
pointed out to me that cover is similar to a latex device commonly used
to prevent the sexual transmission of disease – you can only use it for a
fairly short time before you have to throw it away. If you are dealing
with one or more determined assailants, you may be outflanked if you
expect to rely on the same cover indefinitely. Is unseen movement
starting to look more attractive? By the way, the exception for
long-term use of cover is typically when you’ve been able to prepare
an ensconced position, such as in the designated safe room of your home,
and you are able to limit the direction of attack so that you cannot be
outflanked.
Since my illustrations for this article are drawn from my book Defensive Use of Firearms, let’s take an abbreviated look at a couple of issues discussed there involving the use of cover:
For ages, cover props on the range were referred to as barricades and
served primarily as support, to gain more accuracy with the handgun, at
the longer distances in the courses of fire. However, from a tactical
perspective, many law-enforcement instructors came to advise not
to “hug cover,” in order to lessen the risk of getting struck by
bullets skipping off hard surfaces. Unlike light, where a beam is
reflected at the same angle that it strikes the reflective surface,
bullets that glance off hard surfaces (including water) tend to do so at
narrow angles, typically around six degrees. While the illustration
shows the implications of this with a wall, this is also why many
instructors counsel not going to kneeling or prone positions without
cover. Doing so may simply lower your vital areas to where they are more
likely to be struck by bullets jerked low so that they skip
off pavement or packed dirt.