09/03/2026
Great article by FFT Instructor Josh Stone on Gun Fighting! Enjoy.
“Tunnel Vision” Myth vs Fact By Josh Stone FFT Instructor
You are traveling at night, the way you often do on long road trips, to avoid traffic. The area is geographically familiar though you haven’t been on this stretch of road before. Your wife is in the passenger seat, long since passed out along with the kiddos in the back. The winding switch backs up the mountains this time of year are pitch black. Whatever moon light there may be is filtered out by the canopy of the towering pine trees. The dim glow from the dash almost blinding as you peer out trying to see around the next corner. Black Ice in the curve. No way to see it on the approach. Before you have time to react your Sedan is in a spin. You entered that curve doing at least 50mph. If you don’t make a correction immediately you will hit the side of the mountain or spin off the edge, a 300ft drop at least. Your eyes "lock" on the road and tunnel vision taking over. “Tunnel Vision”, It’s a term that gets thrown around a lot in the tactical or prepared citizen community. What are people actually trying to convey when they use that term? What exactly did you just picture in your head when you read it? What are the misconceptions that surround it? And why does it all matter anyway?
What people describe “tunnel vision” to be and the use of that term in and of its self is an issue. When I use the word “Tunnel Vision” what is it that you see in your brain (or even worse, how have instructors described it to you in the past)? The image that I see is my peripheral vision narrowing and giving way to a dark tunnel with a light being in the center of my field of view. Does this ever happen? YES, absolutely it does. Typically, with blood loss or before loss of consciousness. I've even heard instructors describe it this exact way when referring to high stress stimulus like gun fights and car wrecks. In truth, this isn’t scientifically what happens at all. There is no narrowing of the field of view or peripheral vision. Your eyes are like cameras and they take in all the light. If not, MORE light than usual. The pupils dilate under stress specifically to let in MORE light. Not less.
So, what actually happens and why does the distinction matter? As mentioned before, your pupils dilate and you become target or threat focused. That’s a physiological and psychological response. Stress hormones and chemical are released in the blood stream. Multiple of which affect the eyes. Dilating the eyes to allow more light to enter than usual, even in broad day light.
The next thing that happens is the actual topic of our discussion and it’s harder to explain scientifically if you've never experienced it firsthand. It’s the psychological response. Example: Have you ever been in a restaurant with your spouse? Actively listening to what they are saying? The tables around you fall into a subtle hum in the back ground. You only “hear” what your wife is saying. Until the next table over says your name. Not referencing you of course but someone they know with the same name. Either way, it got your attention.
Your ears are microphones that pick up every word the people say around you. But your brain is the computer that filters all that information out and runs it as a program in the background. Allowing you to concentrate your full attention on the conversation at hand until it hears something that over rides that normal process. In this case your name. This is called “auditory exclusion”. And you experience it every day of your life. The same exact thing happens with your eyes to some extent or another every day. But under stress it happens to the extreme.
Your eyes lock on the “target” (maybe that’s the ditch if you haven't taken a defensive driving class, and maybe it’s the avenue of escape if you have). Maybe you're a hunter and you are getting “buck fever”. All you can see is the buck, paying no attention to the even bigger one coming into the clearing until it’s too late. And you've shot the smaller of the two, now you are watching the larger bound out of sight. Or maybe you’ve been in a gun fight, having shot the threat in the chest. Your eyes locked on the gun in his hand. You can recall ever detail about the tattoo on his fingers. But can’t give an accurate description of his clothing the bad guy was wearing to the officer.
Your eyes will fixate on what it perceives to be the biggest threat. And your brain filters out all the other information. Even though your eyes, the cameras, captured the image your brain being the computer decided the only important thing was the weapon. Everything else can be ignored. This is called “visual exclusion” and it’s the term most people are searching for when trying to describe this psychological phenomenon. When we mix up terms, we paint the wrong image in people minds until that image becomes the “fact”. So, because you have heard “tunnel vision” over and over again, that what you expect to experience, but it never happens when you are faced with a high stress environment. You are expecting a visual stimulus (the black tunnel) that never comes and you never realize you are suffering from “visual exclusion”. And therefore, you never make any attempts to try and break it. The effects / outcome of this could fill an entire separate article all by itself. Suffice it to say, you want to break that “Visual Exclusion” both in a gun fight and in any other stressful environment. Having the full picture of what is going on or as much of it a possible, is always better than not.
This brings us to the “search and assess”. Without turning this into a second article, the objective is to break the visual exclusion and start processing the environment around you. When doing this we take a look around. It’s important to not let the “search” portion turn into simply going through the motions without any real “assessment”. We are looking for more threats, this could be more “bad guys” or it could be more environmental hazards if you’re a firefighter or L.E. We are looking for good guys, this could be more; victims, family, friends, L.E. We may also be looking for a piece of cover to escape the hail storm coming down after our wreck on an icy road, a bullet proof barrier, or a place that isn't full of smoke or harmful fumes in an emergency. The search and assess is designed specifically to get us thinking tactically again (whatever tactically means in that hazardous environment) and to break us out of the “threat / target” focus that our eyes want to lock us into.
If we are going to have conversations about tactics and techniques, they need be to accurate. That starts with calling a round a round and not a bullet. Calling a magazine by its name and not a clip. But also, the more technical things like “tunnel vision” vs “visual exclusion”. Yes, they both exist. But they aren’t the same thing. We have an entire generation of people (myself included before I was corrected) that have a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going to happen to their body under stress because we try to over simplify our descriptions and verbiage.
Hope this helps and challenges you to become more accurate with your vocabulary. As a good friend and mentor Mike Janich of Martial Blade Concepts once said “words mean stuff, so use the right words”.
See you on the range!
