I will be working on this at the range this week.

Have you taken any classes with this guy? Because I have heard about the CAR system for quite some time and it makes very little sense to me. I don't discount it entirely because whenever the guy talks about it, it seems like he has come up with a pretty cogent set of inputs that he thinks this is an answer to, but in actually trying it, 90% of it strikes me as not making any sense nor having a meaningful benefit.

 

I'll start with what makes some sense to me. The "high" position for close stuff is actually a pretty repeatable platform to practice point shooting/index shooting from a close range with some adjustability in "POA" while maintaining a physical index via kinesthesia. It's also a pretty sound position to try and keep someone from grabbing your gun, and you can go from a low ready maintaining muzzle discipline to shooting very fast. Although it makes things harder, you can pivot with it through a fairly wide range of motion and it can be integrated as a rather natural intermediary position in a weaver or modern ISO draw.

 

Now for what doesn't make sense. Pretty much every other position.

 

One it is heinously complicated about what you are supposed to be doing to do it "right" I have NEVER seen a video that shows anyone but him doing this for five minutes without that person screwing it up royally at some point. I'll note their slick "we are a cool training facility" ad doesn't have anyone using this technique (reinforcing my need to ask if anyone but him can use it right on demand).

 

Two, back to the non dominant eye thing. I'm assuming you go to the dominant eye in one direction and the non dominant in the other based on his rotating around the centerline thing and general happiness to go to a mirror image of a given stance to get "180 degrees" of coverage. The only explanation I have found of this is that it allows you to keep your sights in the line of sight to watching the bad guy, while letting you see everything wiht both eyes. I've tried it, and every single image I have seen of anyone doing it form the muzzle end of things basically has the gun in front of the forward eye obscuring a lot of field of view, and your whole freakin' hand in front of the rearward eye. You literally spend every waking moment of your life with everything other than this system learning to do the opposite of what this system tells you to with your eyes. That strikes me as very much swimming upstream.

 

Three. The guy seems to be advocating the use of this with multiple attackers in mind. However it seems to severely limit range of motion to a cone of fire roughly .45 degrees. He gets his 180 by flipping to a mirror image hold very rapidly. However, with his demise, it seems people are finally showing off the details of the grip. While the thumb pushing on thumb things does give you some stability, it is MASSIVELY awkward to swap hands and reacquire the grip. He's fast at it, but he only really seems to get 90 degrees of coverage in the form of 45 degrees of coverage at each end of his 180.

 

Four. A number of things he touts as advantages are no better with tis than any other system. For example the visual check of empty or not is swimming upstream as far as being in fight or flight mode and what usually happens with target focus (i.e. I'm gonna focus on the bad guy first), and really no different than trying to practice that routine with any other stance. The natural position for a reload is anything but. Even when he demonstrates it, he is moving as far from his index as many other methods, he's jsut practiced the snot out of it, so it looks smooth.

 

Fifth. Accuracy. I have seen very few demonstrations of the system's accuracy other than from the "high" position, and even then it has been at 10ft and less. While the accuracy for truly index shooting form the high position is acceptable, I have also seen students of his who are happy with the system transition to the combat high position, which involves a sight picture, and their accuracy was worse than with the index shooting.

 

Sixth. I see a BUTTLOAD of his students on youtube rushing a hasty draw into an awkward position while sweeping their femoral artery. This seems like an awesome plan. You get more than the hazards of a crossdraw holster without any of the benefits like having an easy draw form within a vehicle from the driver's side.

 

I could get a lot more detailed, but that's a start. In all honesty, after examining it, it looks like what you get if you take someone with proficiency in hand to hand and with a sub gun in CQB and zero experience with a handgun trying to make up a technique form scratch. Imagine the technique with a subgun on full auto, and you get a lot more upsides entering the picture IMO.

first video- they forgot to Dosey-Doh.