Practice Shooting at the Range

[7mmWSM]

While shooting yesterday, a gentleman came to the range to practice his handgun shooting. He shot two handguns. A Tauras "Judge", and a Glock 40S&W semi-auto. IMHO he took waaaay to much time aiming. Now I'm not saying you should "spray and pray" but what good does all the precision aiming do in a self-defense scenerio? Am I missing something? Is his method of slow aiming and shooting prepare you better for fast action in a real life situation? Your thoughts.

[Slopemeno]

You can't miss fast enough.

[booker_t]

Gecko45, is that you?

Perhaps he was really concentrating on improving his breathing, or trigger control, a zillion other reasons for slow steady live fire practice?

[Dwight55]

ALL really good hand gun shooter started with accuracy first. IT IS THE most important component to be learned, and can at times be more frustrating than just about any thing else in the world.

Shooting slowly and deliberately until one gets the "accuracy" thing down, . . . will get him/her a leg up on all shooters who try to do it any other way.

Accurately shooting makes losing weight, dealing with a red headed step child, or having a live in mother in law seem like a 3rd grade Sunday School class.

May God bless,
Dwight

[kraigwy]

You never know what he or any other shooter is doing.

Example. I shoot some bullseye. In CF I use a Smith 52. The safety on that gun is a hammer block, meaning you can dry fire that with a round in the chamber. Often in Slow fire I'll fip on the safety and dry fire several times before I fire the round. I like to use the whole 10 minutes to fire my 10 rounds.

You talk slow, try watching a slow fire event in ISU free pistol or air pistol. If I remember right you get 2 1/2 hours to fire 60 shots, and most of the good shooters use every second of that time limit.

As long as he's safe, why worry about it.

[demigod]

Don't discount those precision sniper bird shot kills he's making on the target!!!

[LordTio3]

I started a thread a while back on here and had the exact opposite issue. Some guy came up next to me and started WAILING downrange. He wasn't breathing/standing/aiming/following through/not looking like an idiot/being safe correctly at all. Needless to say this guy got to the range well after me and left right after this poor display, leaving his ammo boxes, brass, and target downrange.

This guy was of the opposite (and I believe worse) variety who thinks that you can shoot fast and hit your target, and then practice to tighten your groups.

Sounds like the fellow you've mentioned was of the mindset that you work on the little things until they are almost natural. THEN you learn to shoot with those fundamentals, with progressive rapidity. I'm a firm proponent of this method. This way, you can always see where your threshold for accuracy lies in "rounds per minute" that you can shoot accurately and then can push yourself with a little more speed while improving bit by bit. You do this until you can put some speedy rounds downrange, but know when you've hit your accuracy limit. All the while ACTUALLY CONNECTING with your target instead of using your pistol to make shotgun patterns on paper.

Sounds like a solid training method to me. Is that all he did? Did he speed up later after practicing fundamentals? If he was actually just practicing fundamentals, as I'm fairly positive he was, it would be like criticising sprinters for not running BTTW durring their warm up. It's just practice.

~LT

[TopHat]

I actually try to slow myself down at the range. Ammo is
too expensive these days.

Got to slow down and chew your food

[Skans]

I practice different things when I get range time. One of them is slow, accurate, aimed shooting. It teaches you / reminds you how to control your gun, your breathing, and your trigger pull. Most beginning shooters take long slow aimed shots only. I don't see any problem with this. At least he's not a doof shooting up the ceiling. Plus, ammo is EXPENSIVE. I can see the value in stretching out your range-time experience. If all you do is go BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM....you will blow through $40 of expensive ammo in 15 minutes.

[stephen426]

I started a thread about this a while back. There were a bunch of "less desirable" looking people at the range just blasting away at the target as fast as they could. While they didn't have pretty little groupings, there were peppering the target. Problem is that even lucky shots can wound or kill. I practice slower, but aimed fire. I usually get decent groupings, but I have little practice with rapid fire. In a poop hits the fan situation, are you going to stand there taking your sweet time to get on target, or are you going to get lead into your target as quickly as possible? I think quick hits are very important. For that, I practice bringing the gun up from low ready and taking the shot as soon as I acquire the target. Basically, this is point shooting and it is supposed to build muscle memory. Pretty soon, you can get good solid hits without even using the sights. While aimed fire is always more accurate, it is not as important at close distances.

I also agree that having a good foundation and learning how to shoot accurately first is important. I tried IPSC when I was in Guatemala and it was an incredible experience. Up until then, I was never allowed to walk around with a loaded weapon in a holster, much less shoot at multiple targets while moving. I used a regular holster and a 1911 from STI. I actually did very well for my first time (according to the #2 ranked shooter in Guatelama). I was slower on target, but my shots were well placed. I also cleared the holster pretty quick.

I guess the morla of the story is to develop a good foundation and build your accuracy with slow, aimed fire. After that, work on speed and point shooting.

[7mmWSM]

Good grief! Who said I was worried about it???? All I did was ask if anyone thought there was a place for extreme SLOW aiming practice. And from some of the replies, they feel it does in fact have a place. Chill out guy. I don't care if the guy takes all day to shoot two rounds. I just wondered if others could see a tactical training asset to this. Sorry I asked.

[7mmWSM]

I have no idea what or who you are talking about. I don't camp out on this forum so maybe it's an inside thing.

[FreakGasolineFight]

Mebbe he was just target shooting for funsies. Some of us do.