sights and trigger

[bamaranger]

In terms solely of accuracy, shooting a handgun well (or any firearm) can be distilled down to "sights and trigger". Expanding that slightly, proper sight alignment and FOCUS, and controlling the trigger, which also addresses the dreaded flinch.

There is more to it than aligning the sights, ...the shooters focus must be on the FRONT sight, with the rear and target blurred. A controlled trigger press, without hammering the trigger and anticipating the recoil (flinch). I'd shot from a very young age, and was a fair shot. When I had those tenets explained to me as a young man at the academy, and applied them over the course of time, my shooting improved noticeably.

[44 AMP]

I've often heard it said that, when it comes to aimed fire, one can do better with a good trigger and coarse sights than with good sights and a coarse trigger.

[bamaranger]

This post was intended to be a reply to the "suck a shooting pistols" thread running nearby. It certainly can be moved or deleted as the Moderator sees fit. Sorry, bama

[Jim Watson]

I can also point you to authoritatively written pieces that the Kewl Operators are in "threat focus" mode and that needing a good trigger is a crutch that shows you are not a K.O.

[44 AMP]

I'm not a "kewl" anything these days, doubt I ever was...

My personal experience with GLock pistols has taught me that service class pistols don't need a good trigger to be popular with agencies buying them...

Since I buy and use my own guns, I don't have to put up with agency issue, and some administrator's idea of what a good gun is. I make my own decisions and one of them is that I don't need to put up with a poor trigger.

[TunnelRat]

Originally Posted by Jim Watson

I can also point you to authoritatively written pieces that the Kewl Operators are in "threat focus" mode and that needing a good trigger is a crutch that shows you are not a K.O.

I would like to be pointed to these. I don’t see how threat focus and good sights and trigger are mutually exclusive. I do think there are sights that allow you to maintain a threat focus more easily.

[44 AMP]

I can see the argument that under extreme stress, when fine motor skills go away, that a poor trigger works well enough, simply because you don't notice how poor it is.

Personally I don't focus on that, as a good trigger will also work fine when your under stress, and works better than a poor trigger the other 99.99999999% of the time, as well.

The last time I was under "extreme threat focus" the gun I had did have a very poor trigger, but, being as it was a belt fed .30 cal, it worked just fine for me...

[TunnelRat]

In the force on force training I have done with pistols, I have no memory of the trigger during those events beyond when I made the decision to fire and pressed the trigger. Even in what I consciously knew was a fake event my sympathetic nervous system was still in play and I no doubt slapped the trigger while staring at the threat. I can see someone going through that and thinking then that a good trigger and a good set of sights is not important.

However, what I have realized over time is that just because I was not aware in the moment of the weight, length, and smoothness of the trigger pull does not mean it didn’t affect me. There are firearms I own where certain triggers are more or less forgiving of bad technique than others. Pressing a trigger on a handgun well enough to hit a target at range is, to me, a fine motor skill. I’m more conscious of this when shooting at say a range, but I don’t believe the effect goes away when shooting under duress.

Lastly, the reason I asked Jim to point to those individuals or articles specifically is I have seen people time and again say a certain group of people, often a group they may not personally like (“kewl”), claims this or that, with little to no evidence. Often this is a bad interpretation of what was meant or even a full out strawman argument. If you’re going to say there are authoritatively written pieces you can point to, then you should be able to point to them.

[shafter]

Much depends on what is acceptable accuracy for you at a specific distance. At close range (relative to the shooter) rough sights and trigger won't matter much. The further out you go the more everything starts to matter, proper body alignment, breath, grip, sights, trigger squeeze and follow through.

None of pistol shooting is rocket science but you have to put in the time getting good reps. A good class where an instructor can critique you can drastically reduce the learning curve and will probably save money in the long run.

[bamaranger]

Note that at the onset of this thread, I believed I was responding to a previous thread entitled "I suck at pistol shooting" or words to that effect. Upon realizing that I had initiated a completely new thread, I indicated all the above and left final locale of the discussion to the moderators. Additionally, please note that my comments began with the qualifier "solely of accuracy" and that the thread I believed I was responding to at the time was discussing what I would term "target accuracy". It has since evolved into a conversation regards combat shooting, or shooting under stress. That is all fine and well by me.

Down that path, it has been my observation that those who have developed the skills to manage sights and trigger properly, and shoot well on paper, transfer that ability when under stress, be it competition, force on force training or "shooting for the record" as I have seen it described. Conversely, shooters performing poorly on paper, do not fair as well under stress. That does not mean a "good shot" cannot fair poorly in an threat situation, or a "poor shot" cannot emerge successfully from same. But I am suggesting that a very solid foundation of "sights and trigger" will serve one well in situations much beyond contact distance. It is my belief that though one may not recall the effort, a passable execution of trigger control and sight picture will occur.

It may be a lame example, but.....what skill level would you prefer your adversary posses, novice or master? My own experience with force and force and competition is that I am quite conscious of sight picture and proper front sight focus. When I am shooting poorly, it is almost always because I am hammering the trigger, usually trying to shoot to fast for the distance involved.

[44 AMP]

It may be a lame example, but.....what skill level would you prefer your adversary posses, novice or master?

Well, if I got to choose, I think I would prefer my adversary to lack the skill to operate a weapon at all....

Thinking about it, it puts me in mind of a very old saying about the greatest swordsman...
"the greatest swordsman in the realm does not fear the second greatest swordsman, he fears the worst swordsman in the realm, because he knows what the second greatest swordsman will do...."

Also, regarding skilled shooters and stress, until it actually happens, its all a matter of "maybe" and hoping you will do what you should do. Its been shown that under stress, some people do what they trained to do, (right, or wrong for the situation), some will do nothing, and some will do something completely unpredictable.

[TunnelRat]

Originally Posted by bamaranger

Down that path, it has been my observation that those who have developed the skills to manage sights and trigger properly, and shoot well on paper, transfer that ability when under stress, be it competition, force on force training or "shooting for the record" as I have seen it described. Conversely, shooters performing poorly on paper, do not fair as well under stress. That does not mean a "good shot" cannot fair poorly in an threat situation, or a "poor shot" cannot emerge successfully from same. But I am suggesting that a very solid foundation of "sights and trigger" will serve one well in situations much beyond contact distance. It is my belief that though one may not recall the effort, a passable execution of trigger control and sight picture will occur.

I do and don't agree. If you don't have the skill on a square range to repeatedly have good sight alignment and trigger control, then your chances of having that under duress are, in my experience, low. I have done a few full days of force on force in a group setting and watching probably two dozen people go through the same scenarios as myself. I never saw someone "rise to the occasion" as it were. The people that had poorer fundamentals did poorer than those that didn't, at least in terms of making hits (decision making was sometimes a different story).

That said, both I and many of those I watched missed shots that even the day before on a square range were laughably easy for us. The targets (assailants) were moving, we were moving though an environment with obstacles and other people, and most of us had some degree of adrenaline going. Now many were able to correct for this and realize that their shots weren't hitting, and then get back to good sight alignment and trigger control. There was at least once that this happened to me, where I was missing, realized my sight alignment was poor/non-existent, and got a good sight picture in order to make a needed headshot. The people that were able to correct for their lack of sight alignment and trigger control seemed to keep that lesson in my mind for the rest of the scenarios during that event.

I think all of this to some extent will depend on the level of stress of the event. Competition, even informal, can add stress that makes people "rush their shots", and even training by yourself with a timer can see this. Scenarios where there are a number of factors (location, multiple assailants, bystanders moving in the scenario, etc.), can present your brain with more to track and sometimes what you take for granted, like good sight alignment and trigger control, can fall by the wayside.

[JohnKSa]

I've watched people completely miss a human-sized target at about 3 yards when shooting while moving.

I agree that shooting accurately on a stationary target while standing still is an important skill. What I found when I transitioned from shooting bullseye was that the skills needed to shoot accurately while shooting fast and moving were quite different. They built on the foundation of shooting accurately when time and movement were not an issue, but they also required relearning things.

When I was shooting bullseye, the best results were obtained with a relatively loose grip on the gun. That doesn't work when shooting fast. I had guns that wouldn't even function properly when I tried to use them for bullseye because I would get grip-related malfunctions--I wasn't holding them tightly enough.

When I was shooting bullseye, I tried to deal with natural point of aim issues to get best results. That doesn't even make sense when shooting from the move or when shooting multiple targets or moving targets.

In real world shootings, people very often move because they don't want to get shot. They are very often shooting at moving targets because they are shooting at people who don't want to get shot. They may be shooting at multiple targets because criminals don't always work alone. They are very often shooting very fast because they are scared of dying and perceive that getting a lot of lead downrange is the way to keep themselves alive.

If you haven't shot from the move, if you haven't shot at moving targets, if you haven't practiced transitioning from one target to another, if you haven't spent time working on your grip so you can shoot fast follow-ups without having the gun shift in your hands, if you haven't shot rapidly so you get used to finding the sights as the gun comes back down from recoil, then it's highly unlikely you'll be able to do any of those things well when you need to.

BEFORE you even start working on all that stuff, you should have sight awareness, sight alignment and trigger technique down. Those skills need to be at the level of unconscious competence before any of the other stuff is going to have a chance of working.

Here are the levels that one goes through as one learns a skillset.

Unconscious incompetence. Unskilled and unaware/mostly unaware of one's skill level.

Conscious incompetence. Unskilled, but aware of one's own skill deficiencies.

Conscious competence. Skilled, but the skill comes from concentration. Able to perform when one can focus on the task.

Unconscious competence. Skilled and able to use those skills even when the focus isn't on carefully completing that specific task--able to use the skills when distracted, focused on something else, or under stress.

A person can do quite well shooting small groups at the range when they are at the conscious competence level because they aren't likely to be distracted, they aren't under much stress and they are focused on nothing other than shooting small groups. You can focus on careful sight alignment, on a careful trigger press, on getting your stance just right, etc.

Gunfights are the definition of stress and distraction. There's a lot going on, you won't have time to think things like: "Get the sights aligned just right...good. Now carefully squeeze the trigger..." because you'll likely be very focused on not getting killed, on getting away or hiding behind something, on who is trying to kill you, on what they are doing, etc. You'll need to have ingrained the ability to track your sights and control your trigger so that they happen without you having to concentrate on them.