August 4, 2026
Gun Talk Staff
July 17, 2022. Greenwood Park Mall, Indiana. It was a Sunday afternoon. People were doing Sunday afternoon things — shopping, grabbing food, killing time. A 22-year-old named Elisjsha Dicken was there with his girlfriend. Nothing unusual about the day.
At 5:56 p.m., a man who had spent over an hour hiding in a mall bathroom emerged with two AR-style rifles, a handgun, and more than 100 rounds of ammunition. He walked into the food court and opened fire. He got 24 rounds off before anyone stopped him.
Eli Dicken was approximately 40 yards away when he saw what was happening. He told his girlfriend to get down and stay down. And then he drew his Glock 19 and started shooting back.
Ten rounds fired. Eight hits. The threat was down and over in 15 seconds.
Greenwood police chief Jim Ison said afterward: “He was very tactically sound as he moved to close in on the suspect. He was also motioning for people to exit behind him.”
No police training. No military background. A 22-year-old kid in shorts who was carrying because Indiana had just passed permitless carry, and he happened to believe in that right enough to actually exercise it that day.
“He was very tactically sound as he moved to close in on the suspect. He was also motioning for people to exit behind him. He has no police training and no military background.” — Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison
Three people died that day. Investigators believe the attacker intended to kill far more. What stopped him was one person who was prepared, who was armed, and who acted when everyone else was running the other direction.
That’s the story. That’s why the Dicken Drill exists. And that’s why it matters so much more than the range routine most concealed carriers actually practice.
Here’s what most people who carry a handgun train for: 3 to 7 yards. Maybe 10 yards if they’re feeling ambitious. The classic 3-3-3 drill — three center-mass hits at 3 yards in 3 seconds — has been the standard entry-level self-defense benchmark for years. It makes sense. Statistical reality is that most defensive handgun encounters happen close. Very close.
But here’s the thing about statistics: they describe what has happened, not what might happen to you specifically. The Greenwood Mall shooting was 40 yards. The attacker had an AR-15. If you’re the only armed person in that building and you’re at the far end of the food court when it starts, the question isn’t whether 40 yards is “typical.” The question is whether you can make that shot when it’s the only option.
Most people who carry a concealed handgun have never once fired it at a target beyond 10 yards. That is a genuine gap in preparation. Not a moral failing — nobody talks about this enough, and most range experiences don’t push you to go there. But it is a gap. Eli Dicken’s performance at 40 yards under genuine lethal threat conditions — no formal training, full adrenaline load, moving, with real lives at stake — is both remarkable and instructive. Remarkable because of how well he did. Instructive because he did it at a distance that most carry-trained shooters have never seriously practiced.
The drill has gone through a few variations as it’s circulated through the training community, but the core is consistent and directly mirrors the documented conditions of Eli Dicken’s engagement:
From concealment, draw and fire 10 rounds at a man-sized silhouette target at 40 yards in 15 seconds or less, scoring a minimum of 8 hits.
That’s it. Ten rounds, 40 yards, 15 seconds, from concealment. It sounds manageable when you read it. The first time you actually try it, especially if your range practice has been at 7 yards, it will humble you quickly and specifically. That’s the point.
Some versions of the drill start at 50 yards with a timer beep, requiring the shooter to move to 40 yards while drawing and then engage — closer to the dynamic movement that characterized Eli’s actual engagement. If your range setup allows it, that version is more realistic and more useful as a training tool. But even the stationary 40-yard version reveals things about your fundamentals that 7-yard practice simply won’t.
Distance is honest in a way that close-range shooting often isn’t. At 7 yards, you can get away with a lot — a mediocre trigger press, a slight wrist break, a grip that isn’t quite locked in. The target is so close and so large that your errors get absorbed by the margin. At 40 yards, every one of those errors gets magnified. The shot that would have been a chest hit at 7 yards is a miss at 40.
Specifically, the Dicken Drill tends to reveal the same cluster of issues across most shooters who try it for the first time:
If the Dicken Drill is the destination, here’s the roadmap. Don’t just show up at 40 yards and feel bad about it. Build the skills systematically.
If you can’t consistently get 8 out of 10 hits on a silhouette at 15 yards from your carry position in under 15 seconds, 40 yards isn’t your problem yet. Fifteen yards is where fundamentals start to matter in ways you can measure. Work here until it’s boring, then move.
Twenty-five yards is where most people hit their first real wall. The trigger press errors that were invisible at 15 yards become a pattern here. Spend significant time at 25. This is the distance that built the foundation for what Eli Dicken did at 40. The “slower is smoother, smoother is faster” principle applies here more than anywhere: a deliberate, clean trigger press at 25 yards beats a rushed one every time.
Long-range handgun shooting is built on fundamentals, and fundamentals are built in dry fire. Trigger press without flinch. Grip consistency. Front sight focus or dot acquisition and hold. You can do 500 reps of this at home without spending a single round of ammunition. If you’re serious about being able to replicate what Eli Dicken did, dry fire is where the investment happens between range sessions.
When you’re ready to try the full Dicken Drill, run it and then walk back to where you were struggling. If your misses are consistently low, you’re anticipating recoil. High misses mean you’re breaking wrist. Misses to one side mean your trigger press is pushing the gun laterally. Diagnosis-based training — understanding why you missed, not just that you missed — is what makes range time actually produce improvement rather than just rehearsing errors.
Here’s something that doesn’t come up often enough in the training conversation around the Dicken Drill, and we’re going to say it plainly because this community deserves honesty: the physical ability to make the shot is only part of what Eli Dicken demonstrated that day.
He also decided to engage. He identified a threat at distance, calculated what was happening and what needed to happen, communicated with his girlfriend, and stepped toward danger when every survival instinct was probably screaming at him to get out. That is not a skill you build at the range. That is a mindset you have to think through before the moment arrives, because the moment doesn’t give you time to think through it for the first time.
Every concealed carrier should, at some point, genuinely wrestle with the question: if I’m in a mall food court and something starts happening at 40 yards, what do I do? Not as a tactical exercise — as a real, personal question about what you’re prepared to do and what you believe your role is. The legal framework matters. The liability matters. The moral weight of the decision matters. Think about it before you need the answer, because the one thing Eli Dicken didn’t have that day was time to deliberate.
“He told his girlfriend to get down and stay down. And then he drew his Glock and started shooting back. He had already decided. That’s what the 15 seconds was built on.”
A Glock 19. Standard size. Nothing exotic. No competition trigger, no special sights documented, no aftermarket barrel. A Glock 19 like tens of millions of other Glock 19s that people carry every single day. The gun wasn’t the extraordinary variable in that moment. The person was.
That said, the Glock 19’s particular combination of attributes served him well: a 4-inch barrel that provides reasonable velocity at 40 yards, a 15-round magazine that gave him capacity beyond what he needed, and an ergonomic profile that supports accuracy under stress. It is not a coincidence that the Glock 19 is the most carried and most recommended defensive pistol in the United States. It works. It worked on July 17, 2022, at 40 yards under conditions that most people never train for.
If you carry something significantly smaller — a micro-compact with a 3-inch barrel, for example — it’s worth understanding what that shorter barrel costs you in velocity and point-of-aim stability at distance. You are not wrong for wanting something that disappears under a shirt. But know what you’re trading and train accordingly.
| Full Dicken Drill | 40 yards │ 10 rounds from concealment │ 15 seconds │ 8/10 hits on full silhouette │ Pass/fail |
|---|---|
| Beginner scaling | 25 yards │ 10 rounds from concealment │ 20 seconds │ 8/10 hits │ Build to full drill as skills develop |
| Intermediate scaling | 35 yards │ 10 rounds from concealment │ 17 seconds │ 8/10 hits │ One step short of the full standard |
| Advanced scaling | 50 yards start, move to 40 yards while drawing │ 15 seconds │ 8/10 hits │ Most realistic to the actual event |
| Target | USPSA full silhouette, B27 silhouette, or any man-sized torso target — at distance, full silhouette is preferred |
| Equipment | Your actual carry gun, your actual carry holster, and the cover garment you actually wear. Train how you carry. |
| Frequency | Monthly minimum if you carry regularly. Weekly if you’re building to the standard for the first time. |
| Companion drill | After the Dicken Drill, run the 3-3-3 at 7 yards to confirm close-range skills haven’t degraded. Both distances matter. |
Eli Dicken was 22 years old. He was out at a mall on a Sunday afternoon. He wasn’t a veteran, wasn’t a cop, wasn’t a competitive shooter with a shelf full of trophies. He was a young man who was carrying because he believed in the right to do so, who had trained seriously enough that he could perform under conditions most experienced shooters have never faced, and who made the decision to act when the moment came.
The Dicken Drill honors what he did by asking a simple question of everyone who carries: can you do what he did? Not in the same circumstances — hopefully you never face anything like that. But at 40 yards, against a silhouette, with a timer running. Because that’s the standard he set in real life with real stakes, and it turns out it’s a standard that makes every concealed carrier better if they seriously work toward it.
Go to the 40-yard line. Run the drill. If you pass, keep running it to stay sharp. If you don’t, you’ve just learned something important about yourself and your preparation that’s a lot better to learn here than somewhere else.
Eli Dicken went home that night. Three people didn’t. He made a difference in 15 seconds because he had prepared — and because he chose to act. Train for both.
