Do you find accuracy fun?

Status
Not open for further replies.
I enjoy hitting what I’m aiming at, whether it’s a 1” dot at 7 yards or a clay pigeon at 25 yards.

If I miss consistently, I would have been wasting my time for the last 35 years.
 
I've gotten rid of handguns I couldn't shoot 2" groups at 20 yards. To me, groups = consistency and consistency=comfort. Knowing how I and my firearm are capable of consistenty performing is important to me. As for the 10 yards or less likelihood of most SD encounters, I'm sure it's correct. I've heard that for as long as I can remember. But I also believe that if you're forced into any confrontation, ending the confrontation from as far away as possible should be the goal.
 
ATLDave said:
I hate group shooting. I do like to be able to hit things. Even far-away small things. So I work on accuracy. But I truly hate shooting groups. I’ll try to hit the upper a-zone on a USPSA target at 25 yards. I’ll happily bang away at a steel plate or popper at 100+ yards. I’ll try to chew out the x ring on a target. But shooting groups is a chore.
Click to expand...
I think I'm somewhere in this general area. I want a gun that is capable of good groups, and I will test them all to see if they are good enough in my hands to suit me. And I'm likely to sell any that won't meet some nebulous standard of accuracy that probably varies a bit from gun to gun, but generally they have to be capable of good tight groups.

But I don't really enjoy just shooting for groups all that much because it borders on work instead of fun. I more enjoy shooting things instead of groups, and doing so with a gun that I feel is hitting where I'm aiming it. If I'm not doing that great of a job at aiming it, that's fine, but I want the misses to be my fault, not the gun's. I don't enjoy shooting a gun that isn't hitting where I'm aiming it. Of all the guns I've owned or even fired, I believe the handgun that does the best job for me of hitting exactly where it's aimed is my 1971 Browning Medalist.
 
Trey Veston said:
I was on another firearm-specific forum and a debate ensued regarding how accurate your self-defense firearm needs to be.

Disparaging comments were made towards the few people such as myself that actually test for accuracy at 25 yards and select self-defense ammo with accuracy in mind. To me, it made sense to carry a gun I was completely confident in it's ability to make a head shot at 75', even if I was incapable of such accuracy in a high-stress scenario.

But one of the insults hurled at me caused me to have an epiphany. The poster suggested that if shooting tiny groups gave me a tingle in my leg, then fine, but it didn't make a bit of difference in the real world.

Maybe, maybe not.

But it made me realize that I DO enjoy shooting as small of groups as possible.

I had just assumed that everyone else did as well.

But I realize that a lot of shooters concentrate on defense drills that emphasize speed and just "getting hits on paper" and eschew the slow fire discipline of getting as small as groups as possible.

And that makes total sense for a carry pistol and is absolutely critical for self-defense. I admit that I need to concentrate more on developing that skill to the level of my ability to make tiny slow-fire groups.

But I still get a large amount of satisfaction from making little groups.

I've re-discovered the fun of when I was a youngster shooting with friends and family when we would be at the family cabin or out camping, and collect the empty aluminum cans from the previous night's imbibing and put out a dozen or so cans on a dirt hillside at various distances and heights, then see who could hit the most cans the fastest. Might not be official self-defense drills, but it is relevant practice and completely more fun.

I guess my question for other shooters here is, do you find getting small groups and optimizing accuracy fun, or think slow-fire at a single target boring and not really important in the grand scheme of a self-defense firearm?
Click to expand...

It blows my mind when handgunners say that where defensive shooting is concerned, accuracy "doesn't matter" or "is second to speed", but that is todays shooting culture. Defensive firearms are judged by their magazines capacities and the speed with which they can be reloaded.

I was reading Bill Jordan's No Second Place Winner awhile back and he states flatly "The first shot is all important, and if it is in, the others will follow."

I have buddies that come to the house to shoot their pistols and it is absolutely mind boggling that most can't hit my 25 yd. torso target, from 25 yds., with any degree of consistency.

So, yes, I find accuracy very, very fun, and I've also found that after shooting targets at 25, 50 and 75 yds., hitting a steel torso at 7 -10 yds. is sort of like shooting at an apartment building from the curb.

1igSpvC.jpg

35W
 
I shoot slowly for accurate groups at 15 yards, and sometimes I stretch out to 25, though my eyes have a had time with that.

I do not do any tactical drills or tactical shooting.

What I get sick of is the A******* at the range who always have to check out someone else's decent group and then add, "But that doesn't mean anything if you can't do it on the move!" Then, of course, they also have to add in a story about their dad or uncle or a guy they knew in the military who could shoot the lice off a bird at a hundred yards and how wonderful that accurate shooting was. Lots of people are pretty weird if you stop and think about what they say.

I never poke fun at people doing tactical drills or that type of shooting. I wish they would shut up and do the same for those of us target shooting.

Different guns and different standards for different types of shooting. It's all good.
 
John G C 1 said:
I never poke fun at people doing tactical drills or that type of shooting. I wish they would shut up and do the same for those of us target shooting.
Click to expand...

I agree with that 100%... and it goes both ways. Snickering at someone who is working on adding recoil control and speed to their shooting because they're shooting "a pattern, not a group" is common among accuracy-only shooters, and just as ill considered.

I learned long ago that judging others in practice spaces is dumb. I used to spend a lot of time at golf driving ranges. More than once, I arrived at a driving range and observed someone already there hitting shots that appeared weak or unsatisfactory in some way. Maybe low-flying 7-irons traveling 120 yards with some fade curve on them. I form an impression of this golfer as being not very skilled at ball-striking. 5 minutes later, this person starts banging out towering 170 yard draws with the same club. Turns out they were intentionally hitting low fades as a recovery shot... their normal shot is something that 98% of the golfing population cannot do even one time. And I'm a fool for judging them while they were practicing and while I did not know what their intention was.

I had similar experiences in the music practice rooms in college. I'd be waiting for my slot in the drum practice space to come up. Dude (or gal) in the prior slot is struggling through something... out of time, disjointed, terrible feel, just can't play. With 2-3 minutes left in their slot, they quit working on the new and totally unfamiliar thing to just play for fun... suddenly they sound like freaking John Bonham. Why? Because earlier they were trying to play some jazz licks for the first time. They were learning in a practice space. Which is, you know, how you get better. If I had judged them as being a lousy player based on their first attempt at something novel and difficult, I would have been a fool.

If you don't know what someone's goal is, there's no way to evaluate their performance.
 
Last edited:
Reliability is first. Then "shootability" -- that's how well the gun does in my hands. If I can shoot a 6" group at 25 yards, and center it where I want it, that's good enough. After that, power.

In other words, it's got to go "bang" every time you pull the trigger. If it goes "bang" you've got to hit with it. If you hit, that hit has to do the job.
 
It's all important.
Without reliability, accuracy is useless
Without accuracy, reliability is useless
It all goes together.
Certain designs are easier to shoot accurately, other designs are easier to conceal, and some designs are more reliable,
but put any handgun in a Ransom rest at it should make one hole groups with match ammo.

You can improve your shooting. You can't improve shooting a lost cause. My 2 cents anyway.
 
Good friend of mine constantly obsesses about group size. I drive him crazy when I tell him I don't care about groups. I only want to be able to knock down steel plates at reasonable distances and quickly. He can NOT fathom ever owning a gun that he hasn't "put on paper
 
Well I don't think missing what imma shootin' at fun but I find shootin' a lot of fun. So yes accuracy=fun
 
I took a self defense handgun class a couple years ago and they did a drill of drawing from holster and engaging a target 10ft in front of you. Basically the example they wanted to stress is fast can be better then accuracy. I practice drawing so I thought I was doing pretty good and I had a small group center mass on the target. After the drill was done the instructor looked at my target and said my group was too small, which meant I was going too slow and should speed up. I just nodded but I know I wasn't the last one to finish firing during each string. So basically my practice and accuracy worked against me in the class. I kinda took the rest of the class with a grain of salt.
 
Rockrivr1 said:
I took a self defense handgun class a couple years ago and they did a drill of drawing from holster and engaging a target 10ft in front of you. Basically the example they wanted to stress is fast can be better then accuracy. I practice drawing so I thought I was doing pretty good and I had a small group center mass on the target. After the drill was done the instructor looked at my target and said my group was too small, which meant I was going too slow and should speed up. I just nodded but I know I wasn't the last one to finish firing during each string. So basically my practice and accuracy worked against me in the class. I kinda took the rest of the class with a grain of salt.
Click to expand...

Shooting a speed drill and pointing to the small group is like getting lapped at a NASCAR race and saying, "yeah, but I maintained my lane beautifully." That's not the point.

"Practical" shooting is all about defining a desired level of accuracy, and then taking the time it takes - and not one millisecond more - to achieve it. The common phrase is "see what you need to see to hit what you need to hit." You don't need to see perfectly aligned sights, with equal light bars on each side of the front post, to hit a human-sized target at 10 feet. If the goal is to go as fast as possible while still getting acceptable hits, then over-aiming is not optimal.

Sounds like the instructor was telling you that you had accuracy to spare, and could afford to trade away a little of it to get more speed - at that distance.
 
Last edited:
PO2Hammer said:
Right or wrong, shooting small groups at 25 and 50 yards with a defensive pistol has been my obsession for the past 20 years.
Click to expand...
"Small" is always relative, but for the competitive shooting I'm doing (IDPA), keeping them inside 4" at 50 yards with .5 - .75 sec splits has been my goal for the last couple of years
 
Accuracy isn't my first concern when choosing a CC pistol, but I certainly find trying to shoot accurately entertaining. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes I laugh to keep from crying, but it's never dull!
 
My carry gun is the most accurate I have-lucky me. It simply takes one thing out of the equation-accuracy. I strive for a draw and fire quickly for the entire magazine, and have it look like the pic below-or better. First thing at the range, and always the ammo that's in the gun. The farther away from the pic below signals how much more ammo I must expend to get back up to snuff. It's my favorite design, my favorite caliber, a pleasure to carry, and it completely outclassed the carry weapon it replaced 18 or so years ago. Yeah, accuracy is fun. And cheaper, if you can do it right away.
index.php
 
I have never shot for groups at beyond 15 yards, but I will have to try to see how I fare. I find that I am, for some reason, more accurate when I am shooting with friends. Two friends and I did a makeshift version of H.O.R.S.E. with our handguns at 10 yards, shooting the Dot Torture target, that day I couldn't miss. By myself, I am never that accurate.
 
One does practice speed, and accuracy. To me accuracy matters most for 2 reasons. 1. Every bullet in a person involved shooting has a lawyer attached so missing your target will be very expensive and may result in the loss of your freedom. 2. If you can shoot only once and the situation is over that is the best option.
Additionally I have never and will never take or practice head shots. Talk to any LEO or lawyer to understand how bad that results in court.
 
I like to find accuracy boring. As in oh, yawn, another 10-x. Not quite there yet. When practicing social situation shooting, some accuracy is inevitably sacrificed for speed, and at an inverse ratio to the distance.
 
Trey Veston said:
Disparaging comments were made towards the few people such as myself that actually test for accuracy at 25 yards and select self-defense ammo with accuracy in mind. To me, it made sense to carry a gun I was completely confident in it's ability to make a head shot at 75', even if I was incapable of such accuracy in a high-stress scenario.

But one of the insults hurled at me caused me to have an epiphany. The poster suggested that if shooting tiny groups gave me a tingle in my leg, then fine, but it didn't make a bit of difference in the real world.
Click to expand...

I can understand and have a bit of a different take on this.
The discussion was more in the line of hand loads and testing from a rest. Well other than Bench Rest Shooters I don't know anyone that routinely fires handguns from a rest. I believe even Bullseye competitions are shot free hand, unsupported. The pursuing argument was how can you judge accuracy firing unsupported.

My whole and sole purpose of testing this way is I want to know what to expect in a Real World, Real Time situation. Meaning if I cannot control the gun or the shot then what difference is there on how accurate a round is? I have my handguns for self protection not for scoring points on a paper target. Now I also feel comfortable enough with my skill level that I am relatively consistent in my shots. I know what I can do and what I cannot do, I accept that. I am also confident enough to believe that my reloaded ammunition is still more accurate than I am at this stage and age in my life.

Now if I were shooting to score points on a paper target then I would most likely change the way I do thing, starting with going from a Semi-Auto to a longer barreled revolver.
 
9mmepiphany said:
"Small" is always relative, but for the competitive shooting I'm doing (IDPA), keeping them inside 4" at 50 yards with .5 - .75 sec splits has been my goal for the last couple of years
Click to expand...

Seriously? With iron sights and a pistol capable of being concealed?

I am glad I no longer compete. On my best day I could never get anywhere that level of accuracy and speed, even with a full race gun. I'm not entirely sure I own any centerfire handguns physically capable of it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

ScrapMetalSlug
  • Locked
What do you consider good handgun Shooting?
2 3
Replies
53
Views
4K
If1HitU
If1HitU
T
  • Locked
Why do I need +p ammo?
Replies
18
Views
2K
strambo
S
mcb
Self-defense vs all other uses.
2 3 4
Replies
92
Views
4K
mljdeckard
mljdeckard
Craig_AR
  • Locked
Range Drills: Training, Skill Check, Fun
Replies
12
Views
624
Craig_AR
Craig_AR
B
  • Locked
Range Drills to Improve Accuracy?
Replies
21
Views
2K
9mmepiphany
9mmepiphany
Back
Top