[kraigwy]

Point shooting is as natural as pointing your finger.

That's all you're really doing, pointing your finger. Using a handgun in this manner is just an extension of pointing you finger.

Its not really something that needs taught in firearm classes, no more then you need to go to school to learn to point your finger.

You already know how to point you finger, but to be accurate you need practice. Lots and lots of practice.

First off, forget about shooting from the waste, or should I say pointing. Set up your (full size man style target). Stand up facing the target (don't need a gun right now). Look at the center of the target, then quickly bring your hand to eye level and point at the center of the target.

As you look at your finger you'll notice its pointing where you look. Keep doing this, getting faster and faster. Each time you'll find you are pointing were you are looking.

Now go to the range with an empty gun. You heard, keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot.

We're not ready to shoot at this point so keep your finger pointed along he side of the pistol/revolver.

Continue your pointing exercise as you did without the gun. I know you said shooting from the hip, don't worry about it, we'll get there. Just keep pointing your finger where you eyes are concentrated (in the center of the target). With practice you'll get faster and more accurate.

Now move up to the target where you can poking your finger at the center. Go back to pointing your finger, which is along side the EMPTY gun, stabbing the barrel where you are concentrating your gaze, or where you are looking.

Keep practicing this exercise, jabbing the target with the muzzle of your handgun.

Now back off about thee feet, (one yard) and try to jab your target again, only this time you cant reach it, but you are pointing your finger (gun) at the center of the target where you are looking.

Now assuming you're at the range and its safe to do so. Load your gun. Don't worry about drawing right now. Hold your pistol/revolve down, (pointing at the ground, not your feet). (you're still at 3 feet/1 yard). Concentrate on the center of the target, raise your gun and point, then pull the trigger.

Make sure you're not sweeping your leg or any other part of the body. You'll find your hitting the center of the target. Keep practicing and you'll see you're shots are hitting where you are looking.

Now move back 3 yards. Continue the exercise, I mean keep at it. If you're shots start to go wild, forget shooting and point with your finger along side the pistol/revolver.

But that shouldn't be a problem, stay at three yards and practice. You're not target shooting, you're practicing defensive shooting, you don't care about keeping the rounds in the X ring, you want to keep them in the vital area, which is a pretty large area.

Now, lets move to the exercise I use in my women's self defense class to get them familiar with and un-afraid of the gun.

The average self defense shooting is referred to as the "three-threes", meaning less then 3 shots, in less then 3 seconds, in less then 3 yards.

So practice this, preferable with a shot timer. At the buzzard, raise the gun to waist level fire three rounds in less then three seconds.

Ok back to the gun safety/finger pointing exercise. Remember keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot. That's an advantage in point shooting because you want to point your finger. So you don't want to put your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot. So you're point your finger, which is natural. After you point your finger at the center of the target, put your finger on the trigger and shoot.

Practice this for a couple hundred rounds. Remember no holster, but from the gun point down.

After you get good, then we move to the holster. But if we interject something new (the holster) we need to go back to zero with our training. Set the gun aside and stick your hand in the holster, pointing or trigger finger extended and start the whole progress again. Bring your finger from the holster up to eye level so you can see that you are pointing where you are looking.

Continue the progression mentioned above until you get to 3 shots in three seconds at three yards. If you shots start going wild, slow down and work your way up again.

The problem you need to watch out for, is at 3 yards and less, you are exposing your gun to the target, which if it's a bandit, he can grab or deflect it. You need to do your practice without extending your arms. Keep the gun in close to your body.

The whole exercise is done shooting with one hand. If you have time to use both hands you have time to move the gun up to eye level and use the sights.

If this sounds simple it's because it is simple. It's totally natural to point your finger at something you're looking at. Its easy to make a handgun an extension of your finger so its natural to for the gun to point where your finger is pointing.

Now the problem with point shooting.

Point shooting is defense of close combat shooting. You want it to be fast or you are defeating the purpose.

When you point your finger at an object, your finger stops when it gets to that object. Lets look at physics a second. We know its harder to stop a heavy object then it is a light object. The hand is light, so its easy to stop once it's pointed at the target. Same with a gun, if its a small light gun, you can stop it when its pointed where you want.

If you have a large heavy gun, its going to want to keep moving as you bring it up to the target, which means you're going to be shooting high when you practice your point shooting.

Again point shooting is self-defense/close quarter shooting. You don't need a heavy gun, you need something small you can conceal and can shoot without recoil screwing up everything.

I shoot a lot of action style competition with a revolver. I wanted to use the same revolver I carried in my 20 years in LE, a Model 28, The Model 28, an excellent service revolver is heavy, in action style matches, you have multiple targets meaning you have to move the gun from one target to the other. Being heavy, it doesn't want to stop moving, causing me to swing past the next target. To combat this, I went to a lighter K frame (M-64).

The same thing applies to point shooting, light is better, you don't want weight carrying you through the target.

In summation, we all know how to point, we don't need to pay someone to teach us to point. You'd be better off taking that money and buy ammo (or components) to practice.

As I mentioned before, I teach women's firearm safety and self defense. Many of these ladies never had fired a handgun before the classes. You'd be surprised how quick these ladies get a grasp on point shooting.

I know this is long winded, but I think it covers point shooting for self defense/close quarter shooting.

Again it should be done with one hand. In self defense shooting you normally always have something in the other hand. For this reason it should be down with both strong and weak hands.