A little while ago, John Simpson released an updated edition of his book, Foundations of Sniper Marksmanship. I did an update post as well as an interview, which drove home the idea of cheating in training is essentially stealing from yourself. Though I didn't publish it, John let me know that he had another book incoming- this one targeted at regular patrol rifles as opposed to preparing for police sniper school. The impetus for this book, Foundations of Patrol Rifle Marksmanship, is largely the same. When a new law enforcement officer arrives on the job, the only experience you can guarantee they've had with firearms is that they qualified with a handgun. The further and further away our culture gets from mainstream rifle marksmanship as part of competition, hunting, or other recreational pursuits, the more likely that a new patrol officer simply does not have sufficient experience with a carbine or rifle. This very challenge is among the reasons I began the Everyday Marksman, though with a slightly different audience in mind. John sent me a copy of the book ahead of time to read and digest. His underlying goal is providing the basics for a patrol rifle training program for police departments, but the content is relative to just about anyone. We then got the chance to talk again, and whenever we talk I end up walking away with a lot of lessons learned and context for future exploration. Here's what I learned this time. Defining Your Target This was a recurring message throughout our discussion, and I want to put emphasis on it here because you're going to see this idea more and more in  my thinking. Last year, I put a lot of time into thinking about "minimum capable" standards for everyday marksmen. I interviewed a bunch of folks to try and assemble an "average" of what they all said and thought. But the truth is that the line of thinking was flawed from the beginning. What I lacked was an actual vision for the outcome. Of course, talking to competitive shooters yields minimum standards of a-zone sized targets at quick speeds from the draw. John pointed out that if you ask a bunch of experts without providing any additional context, they tend to make it up arbitrarily. Instead he offered that we should be thinking in terms of the desired outcome against the target. Outcomes The example he used went back to the Trainfire program introduced in the 1950s. After years of research, they published a series of guidelines for the standard an infantryman should be trained to for marksmanship. Among those standards was an outside edge of 300 yards. Lets arbitrarily assume a 12" vital zone at 300 yards. If you do the math on that, it's about a 4 minute of angle standard (MOA). From here, it would be easy to simply state that every infantryman should be trained to a 4 MOA standard of accuracy. In fact, many militaries have done just that. However, John's point would be that the target is always 12" regardless of distance. At closer distances, say 50 to 100 yards, your goal shouldn't be to produce 2" or 4" groups, but to still hit the 12" vital zone even faster. Otherwise, you're training yourself to slower than you should be for the sake of more accuracy than you needed. The Simpson Drill One of my favorite parts of the book, and I'm not shy about it, is something I'm henceforth calling the Simpson Drill. We talked about this quite a bit during the interview, but think of it as a bit of a head-to-head competition between two shooters.