How far can aimless practice go?

[Slopemeno]

Tom Knapp was awesome. I used to watch his videos back in my USPSA days.

[FireForged]

Sure, but how good are they?

Can you name any self-taught violinists who are now concertmasters with a major symphony orchestra?

was Eddie Van Halen good enough? Eddie was reportedly self taught, didnt take lessons and never read music. He is considered to have been one of the top 10 greatest guitar players of ALL TIME.

Self taught (experts) in many fields are not all that uncommon. The fact is that the most efficient and often the most (safe) way to gain knowledge/skill is to be taught. It does not mean that a person who has not been formally taught cannot reach the same level of skill, its simply that it would likely take much longer and without the a traditionally structured foundation.

I am a strong proponent of training and training certainly helps in most instances. Lets just not pretend that this stuff is rocket science or that people cannot figure it out on their own. Much of what is often memorialized in training are methods and techniques constructed and developed by numerous individuals all on their own.



How far can aimless practice go? Far enough

A person should probably not be a stranger to point shooting. Its a little naïve to assume that the chaos of fighting and combat will always allow for the traditional sighted aiming of weapons.

[Jim Watson]

was Eddie Van Halen good enough?

Well, he was good enough to get popular and sell records and do concerts.
But I am not a musician and can't say whether he was a technically proficient player.

But I can score a target and read a timer, which makes evaluating shooting straightforward.

Practice: A friend went to an IDPA match today with only limited practice. I was comparing her scores to the stage descriptions. Sure enough, she did best on what she was able to practice and worse on what she was not able to practice. Not many places to work on your moving target shooting.

[Mannlicher]

I spend my range time, and my money, with the intention of pleasing myself, satisfying myself, and pursuing my own goals. I do not spend a lot of time wondering about the motives and aspirations of others.

[Trevor]

I once was quite evangelical about promoting participation in local USPSA and IDPA matches. Most people would say to me,

"I am not good enough."

We learn by doing. You do it more, and you will get better. I want to see everyone who owns a pistol get better.

You will get better as you do more, and as you become more interested in it you do it with more purpose.

[Mike38]

stinkypete wrote: I am only ranked "marksman" in NRA bullseye- the noob rank. You boys should see what a High Master can do- it will inspire or intimidate you.

I am barely a Sharpshooter in NRA Bullseye. After 5 years of it, I just recently shot my first clean target, score of 100. High Master ranked shooters neither inspire or intimidate me. Reason being they are not human. Anyone that can shoot a pistol that well can not be from the planet earth. joke....

[stinkeypete]

Congrats, Mike! I have never shot a clean target and my best shooting years have past.

For those who don’t know, that’s 10 shots in the 10 ring- 3.36 inches at 50 yards. Maybe it’s
10 shots inside 0.9 inches at 50 feet. That’s not luck.

As for Eddy Van Halen- he’s a marvelous entertainer and revolutionary popular rock guitarist. He would never make a city level symphony as a classical guitarist. He won’t have a modern symphony written that will live for hundreds of years. I am sure there are many a time he wished he could read music. Eventually, no matter what your talent, formal training and study improve your versatility. Frank Zappa was a trained composer. He was a percussionist.

You might say “yes, but he dropped out of college” but I will counter he studied with professionals in music theory with a professor and many others. He picked up guitar at the age of 23 and … fast forward.. was rated No.1 in guitar magazine for many years. Wrote symphonies, did sound tracks for movies… etc.

[DT Guy]

Eddie Van Halen was a revolutionary, extraordinarily skilled guitarist. His playing caused a fundamental change in popular music that is easy to track; there are entire genres of music which wouldn't exist had he not lived.

Symphonies have lived on for hundreds of years because they were written down; most popular music of two or three hundreds years ago was not, and there were no recordings to preserve it. That's different now-if anyone doubts the Beatles, Van Halen or other musical giants of today will be remembered, I believe they're sorely mistaken.

Additionally, when we listen to a symphony today, we're hearing a 'cover' version; there are no recordings of Beethoven conducting. In the future, we'll enjoy 'Hot for Teacher' played by the composer himself.


Lary

[Koda94]

Does anyone actually practice "aimlessly"?

I think if we mean informal or recreational target shooting then quite a ways with gun familiarity, safety and basic marksmanship, and I dont see why it would stop there even without formal training. Doesn't the military prefer new recruits that grew up with guns?

[JohnKSa]

Does anyone actually practice "aimlessly"?

I think that's a good point.

If it's practice, then it has a goal--it is about trying to get better at something.

If there's no goal then it's not really practice.

If it's truly aimless, then it won't take a person very far--but it's also not practice. If it's practice, then how far it takes a person depends on how effectively they practice and how dedicated they are.

[SIGSHR]

Define "aimless"? I have seen selective fire weapons described as "a quick way to turn money into noise." If you just go to the range to burn ammo, that's pretty aimless. If you go and practice the good shooting habits then it doesn't matter if you're practicing for a match or just going to have fun.

[Mannlicher]

there are almost daily reports of folks defending themselves with guns. Most seem to have had zero professional training.

[TunnelRat]

Originally Posted by Mannlicher

there are almost daily reports of folks defending themselves with guns. Most seem to have had zero professional training.

Most people can pick up a hammer and drive a nail. That doesn’t meant they do it as well as a licensed carpenter.

In a lot of cases of people defending themselves with a firearm when you read into it the story is often that the defender produced a firearm in an effort to stop someone engaged in theft, and in many of those cases that thief was unarmed. The defense had less to do with skill with a firearm and more that one party wasn’t willing to risk their life in a situation where they were relying on intimidation to get what they want. Defensive uses of a firearm between individuals that are both armed with firearms and both discharge their firearms are generally quite rare, even for police officers whose exposure to such events is much more than a typical person.

I spent a number of years shooting at my local range before I took any kind of instruction. I got quite a bit better in that time in terms of my marksmanship and I was among the more skilled people at my range. I am an order of magnitude better after having taken a number of courses. It had less to do with my marksmanship than my weapons handling, tactics, and general situational awareness. The reality was I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and there was no way of me knowing until someone pointed it out (what some refer to as “unconscious incompetence”).

To be clear, can a person without professional training defend themselves? Yes and they have done so. But I think it’s important to avoid the confirmation bias in reading those stories and deciding that professional training couldn’t have made that instance of defense easier, or perhaps even unnecessary with the right training.


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[rodfac]

Well said Tunnel plus one....Rod

[Mannlicher]

there is a difference between proficiency with shooting games, and with self defense. I never have said that training is not a good thing, but despite 'confirmation bias', the vast majority of self defense shootings are engaged in with zero professional training.

[TunnelRat]

Originally Posted by Mannlicher

there is a difference between proficiency with shooting games, and with self defense. I never have said that training is not a good thing, but despite 'confirmation bias', the vast majority of self defense shootings are engaged in with zero professional training.

To my knowledge there isn’t a centralized database of civilian uses of a firearm for defense. Knowing the background of each shooter in every shooting isn’t something that’s easy. Most of what we have are news reports that are limited in details. That said I am willing to believe the percentage of people that both own a firearm and receive additional training is relatively small, so I don’t disagree with your premise, nor did I in my comment. My point is just because that is the case doesn’t mean training may not have been beneficial in those instances. Additionally, just because someone else survived a defensive shooting without additional training doesn’t mean I personally won’t get additional training. Decision making varies a lot person to person, so someone choosing differently than myself isn’t unexpected.


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[gwpercle]

Aimless Practice ...

There was a fellow by the name of Bill Jordan , USMC Vet , Border Patrol agent ... you peobably never heard of him ... who practiced aimlessly so well he could draw his service revolver and hit a target in 1/27th of a secong . He didn't aim ... he called it
"Point Shooting" he didn't aim ...therefore it was aimless practice of Aimless Shooting .

And to answer your question ...if you can aimlessly practice enough ... you wont be no "Srcond Place Winner" in a gunfight !
...how fast is 1/27th of a second ... wow , that's fast , to clear leather and hit a target !
Gary

[Frank Ettin]

Originally Posted by Mannlicher

...the vast majority of self defense shootings are engaged in with zero professional training.

Holy confirmation bias, Batman! Let's see the data that supports that claim.

Basically what we can conclude is that whatever skills successful defenders had were sufficient to deal with the problems they had. Had it been a slightly different problem, the results might have been different.

In any event, you can't know in advance what your problem will be, so you can't know in advance what you'll have to be able to do to solve it. You get to decide how prepared you want to be; but the better prepared you are, the luckier you'll be.

Of course for the vast majority of us the balloon will never go up. But if it does for you and the problem you face is beyond your available skills to solve, you'll most likely have an unhappy outcome.
__________________

[shafter]

One unusual example that comes to mind is Jelly Bryce. He was self-taught and always shot by drawing a double-action revolver from a holster and firing. When he was recruited by law enforcement it was in part to be on their target shooting team, and he said he would compete for them only if he was allowed to draw and shoot from the hip, which he did and won matches that way. I have no idea what targets they were using in the 1930s police matches, but that's what he fired on. He survived 19 gunfights, IIRC, and apparently was constantly in fear of being ambushed in revenge, which motivated a lot his shooting practice. When he was recruited by the FBI it was in part to see if he could train other agents to shoot the way he did and to draw and shoot as fast as he did, which was in a fraction of a second. He used the crouch position for point shooting, but never could train others to do it as well as he could. In later years he admitted he had a natural advantage that others didn't, which was that he could see the streak of his bullets in flight (he favored the .44 Special, probably in part because it was easier to see than some others), and, like shooting tracers, that had enabled him to correct his aim. He also practiced almost incessantly. He was SAC for one FBI office for awhile (Oaklahoma City?), but was later put on other duty at least in part because he would spend much of every day in his office in front of a full-length mirror practicing dry firing by drawing and shooting so that he could always see straight into the guns muzzle (head shot shooting), rather than getting paperwork done.

I've read the same about Jelly Bryce. I've found that by using a SIRT pistol outside on a foggy night you can get the same effect by seeing the exact path from muzzle to target. With enough practice with one of those you can get suprisingly good at point shooting at close range.

[peacefulgary]

Looking back on history from pirates, duelists, gunslingers, lawmen, criminals, soldiers, etc... very few shot thousands of rounds at the range, or even hundreds of rounds at the range, annually.

[stinkeypete]

The question is: what is aimless practice?

I’ve seen people at the range hit the floor several times while shooting at 5 yard targets. They seemed very pleased at the bang and flash and saw no need for advice, lessons, or exercises to improve.

Simply shooting guns in the air like drunk cowboys results in nothing.

Historically, firearms would not last thousands of rounds because metallurgy.

Gunslingers are a very rare handful of fellas but the fast guns certainly practiced drawing fast.

When you shoot a muzzle loader, each shot counts. One might not shoot lots, but one shoots with lots of concentration. Quality of practice certainly beats quantity of shots fired.