All handgunners, please take this poll - I have a theory on point shooting...

[stevelyn]

I can point shoot okay at reasonable handgun distances. My theory is that it's based on an expansion of my instinctive archery skills.
As for drawing........I couldn't draw flies on a hot day.

 

[Johnny Guest]

Interesting theory, Jim - - -

Have you discovered other references which tend to support the idea, or is this your initial research into it?

For my part, I used to be fairly decent with point shooting-- Not the Bill Jordan, aspirin tablet powdering style, but okay. I am certainly not art-grade at freehand sketching, but I can illustrate a concept pretty well. I seemed to have an inate understanding of perspective and distance in drawing.

Let us know if you publish your findings, huh?

Best,
Johnny

 

[Snake Eyes]

Here's an interesting one for you

I have poor hand-eye coordination. Can barely catch, let alone throw a ball on target.

My drawing brings various and numerous scatalogical references.

When I first started shooting, 5 years ago, I went by the largest range rental counter and shot everything. I shot well.

No training, no nothing, just "that one looks cool, give me a box of ammo for it". I shot 2" groups at 10 yards with Sigs and Berettas. Caliber didn't matter. (Glocks and HKs grouped a little bigger).

The times I've tried point shooting, I did fairly well--meaning all my shots were COM at 10 yds, but not grouped as tight as aiming. When I practice, I point my gun then check sights and I'm almost always on target.

I assume that point-shooting is when you keep both eyes open..(edit)..instead of the traditional close one eye method?

I can't shoot with one eye closed. Even weak handed, accuracy degrades completely. Rifle scopes give me HUGE grief. I need super long relief to use them at all. Red-Dots, ACOGs, etc work really well for me.

So, am I a natural point shooter? Or just a natural gun handler?

 

[tomkatz]

I point shoot very well and always have, but like some others here don't freehand sketch very well. I saw some references to sports and that is what I have always related my shooting to, like the ability to shoot long shots in basketball which I have always been good at.
I saw bob munden hitting long three point shots with a basketball and he too seemed to think it tied in with shooting.
I could always hit and catch well in baseball, also table tennis, and excelled at judging long catches in football too. Don't know if any of this has anything to do with anything, but Jim definately has got us all thinking.....tom

 

[firestar]

It looks like your original theory is not holding up. Although this poll relies a lot on subjective interpretation, I think it shows the truth.

 

[Jim March]

First, REAL point-shooting involves fire where the sight plane is nowhere near the eyes. That's the definition I'm using here.

The "Weaver hold" (sighted fire) that I use can be clearly seen in the intro to the current Gunsite page:

http://www.gunsite.net/

It took me a while, but I finally found a site showing the stances of a particular shooting instructor who includes something akin to the WW2-era "FBI Crouch" shooting stance (source for ALL the pics to follow is http://www.cwd.net/TSA-Range-Report.htm ):

Same stance, viewed from the side:

This instructor is using this position as a close-range retention position, in which the gun is VERY hard to grapple away from you. If you have the shooter in the two pics above crouch down some more and take the off-hand completely off the gun, you'd have the WW2-era "FBI Crouch" as used and taught by Jelly Brice.

That old FBI system also included raising the gun to eye level for longer-range shots ONLY. Still firing one-handed.

This same instructor refers to a "flash sight picture hold" HE calls "point shooting":

This is akin to a two-handed version of the old Applegate-type "point shooting", what we today call an "unsighted flash picture" with the gun at eye level. More info on the Applegate types and the general history of "point shooting" can be found here:

http://www.spw-duf.info/point.html

And here's an interview with an instructor seriously "into" point shooting:

http://www.tacticalshooting.com/new/fistfire-faq.htm

 

[Jim March]

I just found a pic of a "high point shooting hold":

Source: http://www.uws.com/Video_Personal.html

Note how the sights of the gun are really lined up more with the guy's mouth than his eyes. He's really using "natural point shooting" but with a more modern-flavor hold influenced by the two-handed *sighted* shooting schools.

Bill Jordan's point-shoot hold placed the gun at around the height of the solar plexus, extended with both hands, and at the center of the body. He would then treat his whole upper body as a "stable gun turret". The sights were much further below the eyeball level as shown in that small pic above.

 

[Jim March]

In answer to the question "what is good point shooting", to me it's the ability to hit man-sized targets out to at least 7 yards or more reliably without the gun's sight plane being in line with the eyes.

 

[4v50 Gary]

Didn't like the choices. Now, I can point shoot but I've had a lot of training and practice. Regarding drawing, I'm no artist but back in the old days of armorer's school my classmates liked my sketches. Good enough to understand but not good enough to be an "illustrator."

 

[12-34hom]

Point shooting is for scatter guns.

One must AIM a rifle or pistol.

But i will say i am a wizard with a box of crayons....

12-34hom.

 

[Jim March]

Well here's how abysmally bad my drawing skills are .

About...lesse, three years ago, I was living in Richmond Calif with a roommate who was into "Anime" - also known as "Japanamation". Think "adult cartoons", in some cases VERY adult.

So anyways...our apartment building gets a major infestation of drug dealers. This wasn't uncommon, but this outbreak was particularly bad - the morons fired up a meth lab in the basement and then put a giant complex mural of a gang tag out front, about 3ft x 4ft that translated to "coke/pot/heroin sold here" in Spanish .

So I decided I needed a nice multicultural "get lost" symbol.

Well, back to said roommate's taste in videos - one cover had exactly what I needed:

http://www.geocities.com/etmassey/Harlock.htm - it's on Geocities so I can't link to the pic.

Perfect. So at 2:00am, I'm out front of the building with a can of black engine paint, about to do a post-modern (supposedly 30th Century in fact) Jolly Rodger all over this damn tag . (To keep it on-topic - yes, I had a 38snubbie in my pocket. I may be crazy, but I ain't stupid.)

As you can see, the actual skull'n'crossbones symbol used was pretty simple. And I *still* needed to carry one of my roommie's video covers out to have something to work off of .

(The next morning, said roommie looked at me funny, and asked if we'd been visited by Harlock the Space Pirate . But it worked - the dealers split the next day, apparantly they realized they'd pushed the locals a wee bit too far. And a few days later, I was leaving the building and a couple of cops had stopped and were laughing their butts off while pointing to my "art". )

 

[10-Ring]

I have only recently been learning how to point shoot. I'm told it's a skill that really depends on muscle memory & lots of repetition. I'm okay & I hope to improve. My drawing on the other hand

 

[Dr.Rob]

I had a buddy that swore up and down that he had better hand/eye co-ordination than I did because he played video games.

I threw him a pencil and said "Oh yeah? Draw my face."

He couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with a real rifle/shotgun/pistol but he did well at Hogan's Alley (the game).

I'm a fairly accomplished artist and I used to practice figure drawing 3 hours a week for a period of seven years (most of college and for a long time at my studio)

You can call it a "flash sight picture" or whatever but you can learn to draw the human form in 10-15 seconds you learn to look, and to SEE very quickly, but you do have to practice.

Try this. Take your UNLOADED pistol (or training aid) index 4 or 5 "targets" in the room, a vase, a mirror, a TV.. whatever. Look at the for a few seconds. Shut your eyes and draw, point your gun at one of your targets. Open your eyes. Are you close? I'd bet you dollars to navy beans a trained observer, like an artist will do better than most folks.

It's an interesting thought.

 

[22luvr]

I'm a published cartoonist.....

I've been cartooning since my age was in the single-digits and you may have seen a couple of my offerings on these various forums.

However, I'm probably a better cartoonist than reactive point-shooter.

 

[Ham Hock]

There should be another option to choose:

"I can point shoot reasonably well with the aid of a laser sight"

 

[SkunkApe]

Jelly Bryce claimed his shooting skill came from his extraordinary eyesight; he could actually see his bullets in the air.

http://www.gutterfighting.org/jellybryce.html

 

[Flashpoint]

I can point and shoot reasonable well and I can pretty accuratly draw what ever I have in front of me.

 

[Thrash1982]

I've never done enough point shooting to tell but I can't draw worth a durn so I'd probably be pretty wretched at point shooting.

on the other hand I am a pretty good ping-pong player and could probably give you a whomping, so who knows. I'll give it a shot (so to speak) the next time I'm at the range.

 

[jem375]

Jim, sorry, your theory sucks..........I can't draw worth a damn, but, can point shoot............

 

[Monkeyleg]

In my younger years I could sketch fairly well; it was something I did all the time. After being away from sketching for so many years, I've lost the ability.

With regard to point-shooting, though, I seem to do pretty well. I've gone out to the range just before dusk, set up a full-sized black silhouette target, put on welding goggles (to get as close as possible to the conditions of shooting at night), then drew and fired without using sights. At seven yards, 42 to 47 of the 50 shots were COM.

At home, if I choose an object and draw on it without aiming, I find the sights to be pretty close to being right on.

Interesting theory, Jim.

 

[ambidextrous1]

Hi, Jim,

Let's look at Cooper's philosophy more closely: He says aimed fire is the best form of training; probably true.

We use the sights in trainong, which helps evaluate the errors that occur in presentation, breath control, trigger manipulation and stance.

Once these are understood and developed into a skill, through practice & repetiion, use of the sights is moot. Except at longer ranges, of course; no one seems to be claiming proficiency in point shooting at 50 yards.

 

[ninenot]

So--was VanGogh a good point-shooter? What about Michaelangelo?

I learned point-shoot by reading a Cooper book and can generally get 5 rounds into a 4" square (center-mass-centric) on a silhouette at 10 yards.

Have taught point-shoot to one young fellow who never before had fired a 9mm semi (he used my H&K USP.) He put 4 rounds into a 4" square (as above.) He was quite impressed with himself. All I told him was to crouch slightly, line up the pistol using his index finger, then death-grip the pistol, stiffen the elbow and wrist, focus 'until his eyes bled' on the target, raise the pistol, and when it broke his line of sight, fire IMMEDIATELY.

Will try teaching the technique to son-in-law who is pretty good with rifle and shotgun but not well-versed with pistol and see what happens.

Cooper may be right that there are only so many point-shooters--but the technique is so simple, as long as one focuses on the target with great concentration----

Well, we'll see what happens with son-in-law. If he can't do it, then maybe Cooper's right.

 

[P95Carry]

My sketching is not good ..... just adequate .. sorta thing as an engineer that will succeed in ''gettin the message over''!

My point shooting is also ''adequate'' ... not remarkable but ..... dangerous to stand in the way!!

I do believe there is a factor here ... which can be both ''natural'' and also ''aquired'' ...... the keyword is ''proprioceptive''.

This is linked to the positional detectors we have in muscles .... bit like close your eyes and stand still .... your proprioceptors can tell when a muscle is on stretch as you begin to sway . and so help accomodate a compensatory reaction from opposing muscles.

Point shooting is IMO all the better when the proprioceptive feedback mechanism is honed .. mostly thru practice ..... but some people do seem to have it made ... with no effort!! Some may also call it 'muscle memory'.

 

[Blueduck]

Clearly, there was something physically *different* about Brice that can't translate well into something "normal people" can do.

I think your on to something there. I saw an ancient tape of legendary speed shooter Ed Mcgiven (sp??).

I swear the guy had the worst form I've ever seen in my life! Any R/O nowdays would have thrown him off the line during his record breaking feats for being a threat to others safety. He was off balance to begin with and was actually stumbling forward as his last shots were being fired.

Bad as it looked it was good enough to take home world records for him...

PS Have to work hard to be even a decent point shot and can't sketch worth a darn...

 

[Griff]

Mr March - thinking anywhere along the lines of the Left / Right Hemisphere Creative / Analytical argument? Spatial relationships? Interesting.

"I can point-shoot reasonably well (without massive training), and freehand sketch at least adequately."
Guess all that time in art school could pay off some day after all.

*pun alert* check out the title of this classic book:
http://www.drawright.com/