The universe of handguns owners and shooters is vast, and there is a very good chance that many of you have never heard of “El Presidente”, or if you’ve heard of it…don’t know what it is. Trust me—you should get to know El Presidente.
The late Jeff Cooper is considered the dean of modern handgunning, and popularized the idea that, “Hey, maybe we should hold onto the gun with two hands.” He started Gunsite (the American Pistol Institute), which for many years was the preeminent private firearms training facility in the country, if not the world. Maybe it still is, but I don’t want to get involved in that argument.
Prior to starting Gunsite, Cooper was a Marine who served in the Pacific in World War II. He saw a little action, and after the war did a little work for the OSS/CIA in the same area. About fifty years or so ago Cooper was hired to train the bodyguards of the president of a Latin American country. He developed a shooting drill he named “El Presidente” to not just help train those bodyguards but measure their skill level.
The El Presidente drill requires three silhouette targets set in a line, with three yards between the targets. The shooter starts ten yards uprange from them, facing AWAY from the targets, his (or her) hands above his shoulders in a “surrender” position.
by James Tarr