How do you know it's a useful technique in many cases? You recently graduated from college. Do you have the length and depth of life experience to make that assessment?
I'm not going to pretend to have wisdom yet, or to know it all, but I can say with certainty that life experience is not the be-all and end-all to qualification and knowledge.
I'm thinking of one prof in particular I had in college. Calling this man "underqualified" is an insult to 12 year old fast food workers all over the world. I made a list of things that this guy believes, despite more years of experience in the material he was teaching (electrical and chemical engineering) than I've been alive:
1. Water in a vacuum system is a contaminant,
because hydrogen is a very reactive chemical, and oxygen is a very reactive chemical, therefore water is very reactive as well. Whaaat? That was the first day of class, too. When I asked if that was maybe a gross oversimplification, given things like valence shells, he decided to say that
vacuum itself, that the "vacuum force" (his words) pulls water apart into elemental hydrogen and oxygen. When he saw the look on my face, he just said "they write books about it."
Employers beware, there's an entire generation of engineers coming from Penn State who
believe the above. I was literally the only person in the entire classroom who knew that ain't true.
Only thing I can figure is that he managed to completely misunderstand how... oh, I forget the name of the thingie, some kind of elemental analyzer. How that works. It operates by charging particles with electricity and then measuring their mass/charge ratio, and determining their elemental composition from that. An electrical charge will electrolyze a very small amount of water into elemental H2 and O2, so that's basically just an inherent flaw in the tool.
2. On the subject of particle accelerators, he said that they can add energy to particles by making them spin, "exactly like a gun does to a bullet. The spin on the bullet
causes it to tumble." This was like the 3rd day of class, so I made the mistake of questioning Dr. Bozo again. He said he worked for the military doing ballistics research.
I was very, very, very tempted to say something like "****, no
wonder we lost Vietnam!", except I would've been kicked out of the class, and he's just slightly too young to have been 18+ during Vietnam.
Still, that says a lot about the caliber of people the military hires for their research, and that at least explains why the early M-16 was such a clusterfluffle.
3. Possibly my favorite. This one was repeated on a weekly basis in class. "Photons are exactly the same thing as electrons. Photovoltaic cells work by capturing photons and converting them directly into electrons."
I don't think I need to comment further on that one. Once again, employers beware. Make sure that Penn State grads understand the difference between photons and electrons, and have a basic working knowledge of chemistry!
4. He said white light has its own particular wavelength, the same way that red is about 620 nm and blue is around 460 nm. Also, he says lasers are not monochromatic, and red He-Ne lasers emit both "white wavelength" light and infrared, and the infrared is solely responsible for a laser burning things.
The exact, specific phrase "
the white wavelength" (singular, wavelength, no S) was brought up many times in classes.
At least
1 other person realized that was wrong on all counts, but only one. I fear for Generation Y or Z or whatever, if this is how much we paid attention in high school physics.
Let's see, that's my whole list. I think I had a few more, but they're not on here.
So hopefully you'll excuse me if there are times when I don't credit experience alone as much as I maybe should. Some people learn from their experiences, and even better, are able to share what they've learned with others (and we've got several such fine gentlemen chiming in on this thread). Others... well... got dropped as a baby. Or kicked.
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ryan... sorry about my comment. As things progressed I see dedication is not really an issue with you. I guess you meant dedicated to learning a two handed method...?
Don't worry about it, I do agree with you that someone who just doesn't care enough to get skilled, shouldn't carry a gun.
I mainly meant the level of dedication which causes some people to spend thousands of dollars on the latest and greatest training. Take an average single mom, living in a low-income housing project, desperately trying to scrape up the dough to get her and her children out of there. You can bet your butt that she will be
absolutely dedicated to whatever it takes to see her children survive. But proficiency with a handgun (if she hasn't been deluded into thinking that guns are bad) will be only a
small part of that whole mindset. And the money allocated for training will be even smaller.
If there are any shortcuts, easier methods, cheaper ways, etc., they should be known.
In my case, it's mainly money. I can't afford to practice like I want to (and I've complained about the weather already
). I do have an okay store of ammo and components that were purchased at pre-election prices, but I'm hesitant to shoot them up. I'm just glad I've got a couple thousand rounds of trigger time already. If I were just starting now, it'd be terrible, ammo prices being what they are.
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I have seen far too many great shooters fall apart in dynamic scenarios and melt down when either their gun failed or the situation required something other than the gun. Task and tool fixation kills, move through the problem
I think maybe one of the reasons why StL got me better initial results is because it's so much simpler. Raise arm, look at target through the gun, BANG! Compared to sight shooting with Weaver. Raise arm, tension both arms appropriately, look at front sight, line up rear sight and target with front sight, pull trigger to the rear slowly, oops it's going to the left, oops it's going to the right, oops it's going dow-BANG!
And at least in my case, just shooting a gun for the first couple times was fairly stressful. It was definitely in the forefront of my mind, that one mistake can cost someone their life.
It definitely takes training, practice, etc., to get to the point where most two-handed techniques feel "natural" enough to do quickly and proficiently under stress.
But something as simple as "look at bad guy, point at bad guy, clench hand"? Anyone can do that! Can it really be that simple? Some people apparently say no...
