When the news of a young concealed carrier effectively engaging an active killer in the mall food court hit it was a big deal in the world of gun carriers. Not only did the good guy prevail, but he also prevailed in a convincing fashion, with seemingly exceptional skill at arms.
It didn’t take long for the internet to light up with videos of people shooting what was termed “the Dicken drill”. Firing 10 rounds at an IDPA or USPSA target at 40 yards and scoring at least 8 hits out of 10 rounds fired in 15-ish seconds. News was slim at the time, but that was everyone’s understanding of what had happened.
Actual Sequence of Events
As more information has come out, the actual sequence of events didn’t quite go the way we all believed it had. Not surprisingly, perhaps, but let’s revisit the idea of a “Dicken Drill” but more closely replicating the actual events.
Eli Dicken did fire 10 rounds and did get 8 hits, but not all of them were from 40 yards.
There were 4 rounds fired from 40 yards, braced, from behind cover. The 4 rounds came in sets of 2, with a distinct pause between the sets as Eli had to wait for his line of fire to clear. Two of the 4 rounds fired hit their intended target.
Once the 4 rounds from 40 yards were fired, the bad guy was moving position, and Eli had to move his position to maintain line of sight. He had already scored significant hits and had managed to put the active killer on his heels. According to Eli’s lawyer, he then closed to about 20 yards and fired an additional 4 rounds, hitting his target with all 4 rounds.
Eli then moved again to within approximately 7 yards and fired an additional 2 rounds, hitting with both.
That ended the fight, and the law enforcement response was quick enough that they were on the scene shortly after the last rounds were fired.
Most of this information is taken from this interview with Eli’s lawyer.
A Proposal
Given this more accurate information, I propose a new version of the Dicken Drill.
Since Eli did all this work at once, this will be a single string of fire. Starting from the 40 yard line and ending at the 7 yard line with a stop in the middle at the 20 yard line. If you have made it this far, this should be pretty self-explanatory.
Start holstered and concealed at the 40 yard line. On the start signal, draw and fire 4 rounds, from behind cover. Quickly move to the 20 yard line and fire 4 additional rounds. Move to the 7 yard line and fire the final 2 rounds. Time the entire sequence as a single string.
Scoring
We don’t have a specific timeline for how quickly this all went down from start to finish, but we can address this in how we score the drill. With a 5/3/0 scoring scheme on either an IDPA or USPSA target, we can use a points per second scoring system. With a total of 10 rounds fired, the maximum score would be 50.
Assuming we score 50 points (because we are that awesome) and it takes us 35 seconds, we would divide the number of points by the number of seconds. That would give us a raw number of 1.42, or a hit factor of 1.42. The higher the hit factor, the better the score.
The Downside (or maybe upside)
Obviously, this will be advantageous to the younger, and more athletic among us (not me, by the way). That is just the way the world is I am afraid.
The key will be balancing the speed of shooting with the level of accuracy. Getting hits at 40 yards is not something often practiced by many of us, and that accounts for 40% of the rounds fired in this case.
If you give it a go, be sure to drop the score in the comments. See you on the range.
