Experience. What kind of experience and how much of it matters? This topic is often a heated debate in firearms and tactics training. And, it’s really not such a simple question is it?

We are well into our second decade of the GWOT. Our special operations units have had an unprecedented operational tempo. The lessons learned from that experience have created a level of institutional knowledge in the special operations community that is in my opinion at least the equal of any warrior class in history.

Also, the cold hard truth is that any able bodied person who wanted to get into the fray has had the opportunity to. There have been Wall Street traders, rock stars, and professional athletes who walked away from their careers to become Rangers and Green Berets. For those with stable careers, there are reserve component Special Forces groups. Anyone who wanted to be a warrior has had ample opportunity to.

This honestly gives those of us who chose that path little patience sometimes with people who teach gunfighting who don’t have that experience. Sometimes that’s fair. And sometimes it’s not. Those who chose a different path can still have expertise. I have learned the most about shooting from someone who has never been in a gunfight. The same can be said for many other skills. But tactics aren’t skills. They are the application of skill in conflict.

So if experience is important for teaching tactics, how do we judge that experience? I had a seasoned SWAT officer who has been in several gunfights as a member of the team argue one of the single most basic principles of CQB in an AAR once. On paper, he was experienced. In reality he hadn’t learned the most fundamental lessons from anything he had done. Exchanges like this are also why most SOF veterans, myself included, tend to view police experience as secondary to combat. At least where tactics are concerned. Especially because of the differences in intensity and volume between the two. That bias isn’t always fair either. The best CQB operator and instructor on my old SWAT team has no military service, but he intuitively understood tactics, learned from every run he did, and could teach others.

So, experience matters. And not all gunfighting experience is of equal value. But what experience matters for is context. Not all those with experience learned from it. And even fewer can teach others how to do what they can do. Does the instructor have knowledge worth passing on, and can they give you their lessons learned without you having to pay the same price? That’s what matters.