Also by Michael T. Rayburn

Over the years different stances, or shooting platforms, have come and gone with various names attached to them.

If you're in condition green, go about your life just as you would proceed through an intersection. If you're in condition yellow, use caution and be prepared because condition red may be just around the corner. If condition red does present itself, stop and be prepared to deal with the threat.

Since the majority of OISs are up close and personal, with no cover available, movement becomes an essential element in any gunfight.

You have no choice. You draw your service weapon and fire three rounds into the dog. Two find their mark in its chest cavity, while the third rips through one of its front legs. It takes a few more paces, collapses, and dies.

For those of us involved in law enforcement we know that there is no such thing as the "routine traffic stop." The names of well over 300 officers who have been killed while making a traffic stop are engraved on the gray granite walls of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.

For some reason, most officers have a vision of a gunfight as being one shooter against another. The reality of such incidents is much different and even deadlier. An alarming number of police gunfights involve more than one bad guy against a single cop.