Reality Check: Do you know how to shoot?

[Dnaltrop]

Training from a Professional, yes... But as he was my Great-Uncle I don't consider that to be "professional" training, anymore than I would consider my Mother teaching me to roll dolmathakia or handle a chef's knife.

The rest is just constant practice.

 

[dark.zero.x]

I use a modfied weaver, and its taken me 2+ years of constant shooting (about 5 times a month) and at least 1100 rounds per wepon system to be come a good (not very good or awesome) pistol shot. When I started I was a poor pistol shot, a lot like everyone else around me at the range. I've taken 2 classes, one recently and one about 2 years ago. I used to think like those people you described, one day I desided I know nothing and that I need to improve my shooting skill with handguns. As long as you always think about learning, and that you need to improve, then you won't waist yor money on classes and ammo.

 

[JohnKSa]

I was at the range yesterday for a couple of hours. I was there to get my carry gun (Kahr CW9) shooting closer to point of aim. It was shooting good groups but they were centered to the right of the point of aim. I finally managed to get it centered up by drifting the rear sight to the left and shot some groups in the 3-5" range at 25 yards that gave me reasonable confidence in the gun/ammo combination for carry.

During the 2 hours I was there, I was the only person to run a target out to 25 yards. Most of the shooting was being done at the 5 yard line and while I didn't make a point of walking up and down the line examining targets, several of the ones I saw being shot at that distance showed "groups" that often measured a foot across or more and were clearly centered off the point of aim by several inches.

Admittedly, some of that shooting was being done fairly rapid-fire, but mostly folks were shooting fairly slowly and still not hitting. That is more or less what I normally see when visiting the range. I've come to the same conclusion as the OP. Many (most) people don't know how to shoot.

Just to be clear, slowfire accuracy isn't an end-all, be-all when it comes to handgun shooting, but it's where folks need to start. If they can't make the gun shoot where they want it to when they're taking their time, things won't get better when they try to go faster.

 

[Hit_Factor]

Yes I have been to paid training on many occasions. Even the high end combat training will review fundamentals.

Poor training like state mandated CHL course is painful to attend. Even hunter safety has issues on occasion, but by and large, is good for our youngsters.

BTW, I am a certified instructor as well.

 

[Bovice]

In short, yes.

 

[Strykervet]

Hey, good thread. Really.

As for handguns, I have to say "no" I guess. To be frankly honest. What I know I taught myself and picked up here and there. I'm not bad, at 7m I can gurantee a head shot, and I can hit silhouette out to 100m with most handguns, including a Glock 27, and much farther with others (300m with a 686+ is my best). I have a 17L that shoots ragged holes. But when it comes to pistols, I have good days and bad days, so something hasn't completely gelled yet.

When it comes to rifles, I taught SDM's in the army. They'd come in just regular infantrymen and leave basically as M4 ninjas. We taught as much as we could in a month or so per class, and it was based on sniper schools (Army, SF, SOTIC, Marine, and I think one guy trained with SEALS when he was in a ranger unit). Plus lots of experience, and all the instructors were gun nuts. Fundamentals were HIGHLY stressed (trigger pull, position, etc., and they had to do well on the NM course with irons to progress to the ACOG.) Best job ever, I was lucky to get it.

We did ocassionaly teach officers how to use their M9's, but they were usually just interested in qualifying and moving on, so we didn't spend much time with them. We did teach a lot of cool stuff to machinegunners though.

I only wish I was half as good with a pistol as a rifle. With a pistol, I have to actually think about what I'm doing, and my stance is a self-modified RH weaver position, left foot foward. I do okay, but I'm nowhere near as natural with it as I am an M4 or any other rifle for that matter. I can drop my M4 and draw that handgun pretty dang quick though.

I carry daily, and I'm not bad, but I'd like to get into 3g matches to work up my pistol and shotgun skills. Heard the army is going to 3g shooting to learn new techniques! Pretty cool, so if you want to be on the cutting edge of training, sign up for those.

 

[USAF_Vet]

The Air Force gave me some decent rifle and handgun training. I have not pursued any formal training and am pretty much a self taught shot gunner. Defensive shotgunning, I treat the weapon as if it were a rifle in stance, hold, body positioning, etc. Wing shooting, I more or less learned through observation and mimicry.

 

[Serenity]

Two summers ago I hadn't held a handgun. For a summer activity I decided to take the Boy to an NRA pistol course because shooting is on my list of things that everyone should know how to do: change tire, change oil, change a diaper, ride a horse, build a fire, shoot. Stuff like that. (I would like to add fly a plane to it, lol). Anyway we went to the first classroom day of the course and were the only woman and teen there. Most of the guys were attending to renew their carry permit. Maybe all of them. The instructors were unpaid, fees covered the ammo and materials. I was skittish as hell and nervous about the Boy. He's, well, it just takes him time to pick up something new using his hands. Brilliant intellectual; primitive with tools.

So we went to the class in the back of the local gunshop, it was awesome, teachers and students were very welcoming to us, so we went to the range session the next day. Same experience; everyone was awesome. I have been thinking lately that I would love to shoot with the instructors again; my son mentioned it too. Maybe we could do just the range day of the next course... that would give us a chance to shoot some other guns, too, and show off ours

In summation, I can't recommend highly enough the course and instructors from the course taught in Latah County, Idaho.

 

[ZeSpectre]

Cowboy Action Shooting - Decent enough
Bullseye target - Middle of the pack
Trap/skeet - um, can we change the subject
Rimfire Challenge - upper quarter
Personal Protection - upper quarter

I suppose that means I can shoot at least decently.

 

[ClickClickD'oh]

Even the most highly trained pros have a foundation in some type of shooting technique that they build from.

Uh, that's what I said..

See:

Precise and practiced forms are great for the introductory student to learn the basics and set muscle memory, but once things get more advanced the options are a lot more fluid and open to interpretation.

Don't mistake me, I think it's very important that everyone that wants to use a handgun effectively learn and master the basic stances. Note: Not just one, all of them. And be effective in all of them. I think it's equally important than a student learn beyond the basic stances or they haven't really learned anything at all. If you know Weaver and rock Weaver, but only rock Weaver you have a serious gap in your training. If you know Isosceles and rock Isosceles, but only rock Isosceles you have a serious gap in your training. To be an effective shooter you better also be able to equally employee shooting from retention stances, one handed strong side, one handed weak side, shooting while advancing, shooting while retreating, shooting while moving laterally, laying down, laying down on your side, laying down on your back, leaning around barricades...etc, etc... the list goes on and on.

What I was saying is that if you have a single stance, you are the yellow belt of the shooter world.

 

[mljdeckard]

The OP is absolutely correct, in that there is a lot more to shooting than buying a gun and cranking a few rounds through it.

I tell my new shooters, people who are trying to shoot well enough to carry, they should start with the 3-3-3 rule. They should be able to draw and shoot three rounds through the torso at three yards in three seconds. This is a good place to start.

Everyone should realize that training is an ongoing process. Massad Ayoob takes a week off of every year to train. If HE needs to train, so do you. Even the basic familiarization the army gives for pistol training is appallingly poor. It certainly doesn't come close to preparing someone to use that pistol to save their life. I was once at a public range with a bunch of rookie cops who had borrowed some interesting weapons from the police locker, and even with their service pistols, they were all over the place. If you carry a gun for defensive use, you need to commit to ongoing training just to keep the skill you have, and it is actually better to compete to improve your times, skill, and confidence.

 

[Derek Zeanah]

I can answer this one.

I learned to shoot when I was five: rifle shooting, shotgunning (doves, quail, skeet, trap, sporting clays), and enough handgun shooting to be safe. Signed up as infantry a bit over twenty years ago (actually 20 years, 2 months, and 6 days ago) and learned a bit more about the employment of the carbine and heavier rifles. Always scored expert with rifle and pistol, and figured I mostly knew what I was doing. When going to the range with a buddy and his select-fire FAL and Uzi I'm still pretty accurate with controlled 3-5 round bursts.

But nobody ever taught me to fight with a pistol, and I'd never learned how to draw properly.

I fixed that a couple of months ago by going to Gunsite's 250 Pistol course. I'm probably an order of magnitude more effective with a pistol now, and I never knew what I was missing. Wish I'd done it a decade ago.

 

[mavracer]

Never paid for training. For starters I had this thing called a father who took me shooting and tought me safety. Then as I got older there were fields full of dirt clods and bricks of 22s that tought me things like kentucky windage. Then there were the squirrels which tought tactics and how to hit moving targets. Learned to shoot shotguns on dove, quail, phesant and ducks. Dad would some years take us to the skeet range for warm ups.
In the 30 years since then I've done a fair amount of reading. Tried my hand at just about every shooting sport known to man. I can hold my own anyway I actually enjoy shooting and self defense is more of a byproduct IMHO After learning to knock down steel targets at 200 meters with a revolver the ability to hit a target at bad breath range isn't that tough.

 

[conw]

I'm probably an order of magnitude more effective with a pistol now, and I never knew what I was missing. Wish I'd done it a decade ago.

Well-said Derek. Sounds like the Dunning-Kruger effect in action:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority.

 

[conw]

One more thing - again, for the absolute best in "real world" drawstroke work (which can be practiced at home dry and at the range if allowed), I recommend STRONGLY anyone who wants some good input to get Southnarc's "Fighting Handgun I."

It has all kinds of drills that incorporate working the pistol up close that integrate well, in a single drawstroke, with typical "full extension" techniques.

 

[9mmepiphany]

I prefer the modified isosceles stance because unlike the Weaver, it does not take constant practice to ingrain into muscle memory and in my experience a beginner can make the perfect triangle more reliably than they can the pressure counter pressure isometric tension the Weaver requires to execute well (some may disagree with me here).

I thought this should be addressed as it goes completely opposite to my experience as a person who carried a gun for a living and as a trainer who's main job seems to be correcting the bad habits others have developed in practicing without understanding

While pushing your arms out and forming a isosceles triangle is easy to remember, there is a lot more to the stance/grip than just that to optimize the Modified Isosceles when trying to shoot both accurately and quickly. It requires overcoming natural tendencies in gripping and tension.

The Weaver or Modified Weaver is much easier to teach...as it has hard indexes as opposed to floating ones...and easier for new shooters to retain. It is what I teach shooters who either have limited training time available or a limited interest in reaching a higher skill level.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...It requires overcoming natural tendencies in gripping and tension...

This seems to be an excellent invitation to say something about the common notion that we should be doing things "naturally."

Often what is natural or instinctive is not best or even correct. Training and practice are largely about overcoming what is natural or instinctive and learning instead to automatically do what is best or most appropriate.

For example, when driving a car, one's instinctive reaction in the event of a skid is to apply the brakes. We know that is the wrong thing to do; and so, if one is lucky enough to get some training in high speed driving, one learns to stay off the brake, turn into the skid and, under some circumstances, even gently apply some throttle.

Many of the more complex tasks we come to do without conscious thought aren't really instinctive or intuitive; they are, rather, reflexive. They are not natural, innate responses we are born with. Rather, they are habitual responses developed and conditioned by training and practice.

 

[orangeninja]

I thought this should be addressed as it goes completely opposite to my experience as a person who carried a gun for a living and as a trainer who's main job seems to be correcting the bad habits others have developed in practicing without understanding

While pushing your arms out and forming a isosceles triangle is easy to remember, there is a lot more to the stance/grip than just that to optimize the Modified Isosceles when trying to shoot both accurately and quickly. It requires overcoming natural tendencies in gripping and tension.

The Weaver or Modified Weaver is much easier to teach...as it has hard indexes as opposed to floating ones...and easier for new shooters to retain. It is what I teach shooters who either have limited training time available or a limited interest in reaching a higher skill level.

Like I said some people may disagree. Shooting stance arguments are akin to political discussions.

I have had remarkable success teaching people using the MI and like you have had to overcome years of bad habits. The Weaver or Modified Weaver has the deadly flaw of dropping the off hand elbow or bending at both elbows. This results in muscle absorbing recoil and the shooter has to focus on their hands to align the pistol correctly rotating at the shoulders.

The MI locks the arms the same way every time and though the gun may shift in their hands a proper grip (also essential with the Weavers) will prevent this. As for recoil the bones and joints aid the muscles in absorbing recoil and allows for quicker recovery time. Movement is rotated at the hips/waist rather than shoulders.

Plus once the MI is learned it seems to "stick" better in the minds of the trainees and usually only takes a few hours and about 500 rounds to get down to a good fundamental level. The best part is as they progress they can begin to speed up shots without compromising accuracy (much) and most importantly is not fully reliant upon a shooter's perfection of isometric tension using smaller muscle groups to align and recover correctly.

To me the Weaver is too easy to get sloppy with.

Disclaimer: I started shooting life using a Weaver stance taught to me by my dad. When I became a LEO I learned MI and became much more effective but more importantly I became consistent and was able to gradually become better and better. As an aside, I did notice most of our "old heads" (senior cops) liked the Weaver better...

 

[lyrikz]

This may be slightly off topic, or right on topic. Have you ever noticed the elitist attitude of gun owners. It seems a huge majority of you guys on this board either know everything, are better then every other gun owner, and have never been new at guns?

In EVERY post this is some form of this. This thread exactly. "i was looking around at all the people i was better at". Thats what your saying.

I dont see it in anything else. In all the forums i go to, gun forums are horrible for this. I think it has to do with guns being so personal to people. NOt trying to bash op, i get what your saying, maybe i should of started another thread on it.

 

[Sam1911]

I think you'll see a lot of that in any endeavor where there are measurable differences in performance levels -- especially when those performance differences can and do have direct impacts (ha! A double entendre...) on the safety of others.

I think most of us can remember what it's like to be new to shooting.

Many of us are also caught in the uncomfortable middle ground between desiring that every person avail themselves of their right to bear arms, on the one hand, and our increasing awareness of poor safety practices and accuracy exhibited (even under square-range conditions) by many of those same folks we -- in principle -- are so keen to have bearing arms, and possibly whipping out those sidearms to defend themselves, in the very same "public" we occupy ourselves.

So, on one hand we're saying, "Please keep and bear firearms and join the ranks of the armed citizen," and on the other we're secretly thinking, "If you ever have to shoot for your life, I'm going to stand behind the bad guy...that's the only place you seem incapable of putting a bullet!"

None of us are willing to see mandated training requirements or similar restrictions, but amongst ourselves we will occasionally admit that not everyone who owns a sidearm is quite ready for 'prime time.'

 

[conw]

lyrikz, there is a time to be humble and a time to be realistic about skill level. Skill level with guns, unlike say romance, or cooking, is not very subjective. And more than most other skills people's lives hang in the balance.

The Dunning-Kruger effect (see above in my reply to Derek) is real. Anyone who cares enough about other people to want law-abiding gun owners to proliferate is well-served by being aware of it and making others aware of it. It is simply dangerous to have a bunch of ill-informed bad shooters wandering around in public, as they are less likely to be able to defend themselves and more likely to hurt themselves or an innocent 3rd party.

So it's a little different than chest-thumping by posting a thread saying "Man, I can't stand eating over at my brother in law's house...his wife really can't cook...for that matter neither can my wife's mom...my family cooks so much better!"

 

[orangeninja]

This may be slightly off topic, or right on topic. Have you ever noticed the elitist attitude of gun owners. It seems a huge majority of you guys on this board either know everything, are better then every other gun owner, and have never been new at guns?

In EVERY post this is some form of this. This thread exactly. "i was looking around at all the people i was better at". Thats what your saying.

I dont see it in anything else. In all the forums i go to, gun forums are horrible for this. I think it has to do with guns being so personal to people. NOt trying to bash op, i get what your saying, maybe i should of started another thread on it.

You clearly do not visit higher education forums, various musician forums or motorcycle/biker forums (all of which I participate in)...this is pretty common. The difference here is like Lee pointed out, we almost always ask and advocate for people arming themselves, the point is being "armed" is not simply having a gun but also knowing how to use it. Why make 1/2 investments in buying a gun but no training? It's not elitist, it's a valid life and death concern. Now if I were turning my nose up at what kind of gun others were shooting, that would be elitist.

Trust me...I know everything.

 

[JohnKSa]

i was looking around at all the people i was better at

The sad thing is, most shooters I know are more than happy to give someone a little help if they're asked--to a fault, actually.

The problem is, I can't just walk up to someone and tell them what they're doing wrong (Hey dude, here's why you can't shoot worth crap--let me give you a hand.). BUT, if they want to do better they could have asked me. I would have been more than willing to give them some pointers. I didn't get all my NRA instructor certifications because I hate helping out new shooters.

But no one ever asks. They just go on shooting groups at 5 yards that are 3x or 4x as big as the groups I'm shooting at 25 yards as if making noise and burning ammo is really all they ever aspire to do.

Thats what your saying.

Not really. What I was saying, and what the OP was saying, is that it's sad that there's so much in the way of training resources out there that hardly any shooters will avail themselves of.

The range where I was shooting offers very reasonably priced training. For $30 you can have one of their instructors come out and give you 1 on 1 help for half an hour. I've never seen anyone taking advantage of that offer.

 

[KodiakBeer]

The problem is, I can't just walk up to someone and tell them what they're doing wrong (Hey dude, here's why you can't shoot worth crap--let me give you a hand.).

True, and that's partly the reason I leave that "get a .22" advice in every newbie thread. The pure fact of the matter is that the more you shoot (given even some basic training) the better you'll get. And if you start with a .22, you'll shoot plenty.

I really do get tired of the "buy a Glock" (or whatever) advice given to new shooters on this board. The simple facts are that the majority of people who start with a centerfire pistol aren't going to shoot enough to get very good. Ammo is too expensive. They'll buy a box of .40's, shoot it and not show up at the range again for a month. In a year, they'll shoot as many rounds as a guy with a .22 does at a single session.

If your shooting sucks (and be honest about this...) ask the guy in the next stall for help. He's almost certainly willing to give you a hand. And for your own sake, get a .22 and shoot a brick every time you go to the range.

 

[Ankeny]

I too frequent a public range and the skills I see exhibited are often times pretty dismal. I also realize if any of those responsible gun owners were to stick a pistol in my face and pull the trigger, I would be screwed.

Now that I am a bit older, the only thing I really concern myself with in regards to other shooters is gun safety. I rarely shoot when the range is occupied. If an unsafe shooter shows up, I gather up my stuff and leave. On two occasions I have notified law enforcement officers of unsafe activity at our public range. They (LEO's) can make an evaluation and take action as appropriate.

I also agree that most shooters are more than happy to help out if asked. Unfortunately, a complete newbie has no frame of reference to use in judging the usefulness of new information. I guess what I am trying to say is I see a lot of "informal" training at public ranges that is suspect. Not trying to come off as a critic, but people who help others really do need to be aware of where there are in their own learning curve.

As for the elitist attitude on forums, I spout that attitude when I am in a grouchy mood and feel like being a bit of a troll. I should refrain from that behavior, but I just have issues with self control.

Do I know how to shoot? Yes.