A strong personal belief of mine is that we have to teach the new generation to shoot if we want to save our rights. Because of this, I always jump at every chance I get to introduce people to firearms, especially when it's a “non-traditional” shooter. Sadly, my generation never learned about firearms outside of the movies, so the knowledge base is incredibly low. I'm hoping some of the old hands here can give me some ideas on how to improve my instructional skills for this situation.
Today I was teaching a young female how to shoot. She's a U.S citizen, but since she was raised in Cameroon, English is a second language to her, and there are certainly some barriers there. I had an incredibly difficult time trying to get her to accurately line up the sights. After the usual safety lesson (four rules) and general explanation of mechanics of the firearm (glock 23), we progressed to shooting. I started by using diagrams to explain the sights, then had her practice with a blue gun of mine. I was using a weaver stance as opposed to a isosceles, but for the most part it just amounted to explaining proper grip and the push/pull system. She appeared to understand it all, so I moved to live fire.
I'm not trying to teach anything incredibly complicated or advanced here, just how to line up the sights and squeeze off an untimed shot at a moderate range. I started by having her dry fire. She had no inherent flinch, and was pretty stable for a first time shooter. I then fired a few rounds at twenty-one feet so she could see how it sounded and looked. I then had her line up the sights and simple remain indexed while I squeezed off a round.
This is where I ran into trouble. No matter what I tried to have her do, her rounds were not on target. I thought it might be cross-dominant, and had her use the right eye, the left eye, and both eyes, but none of it worked. I verified the problem was not with the weapon and used very close targets (3-7 feet), but she was still shooting consistently off. The problem did no appear to be in her grip as far as I can tell. I had her squeeze off the rounds herself (I didn't pull the trigger for her) and it just got worse from her flinch. I then had her squeeze the trigger while I held it aligned and it was accurate as ever.
To make a long story short, I never did solve the problem, We worked through about 100 rounds of .40, and while she became adept at loading, manipulating, clearing, etc of the weapon, I never got any accuracy. She did appear to have an awesome time(that never-ending grin that first time shooters get when they realize the gun won't bite them), but I'm not satisfied with my teaching. The only think I can think to do is find a laser sight so I can determine what she's doing with the sights, or perhaps use a firearm with a less canted grip (XD perhaps?). I don't want to take her back out there until I have some sort of plan, so I don't ingrain any more bad habits into her. What do the experts here think?
Today I was teaching a young female how to shoot. She's a U.S citizen, but since she was raised in Cameroon, English is a second language to her, and there are certainly some barriers there. I had an incredibly difficult time trying to get her to accurately line up the sights. After the usual safety lesson (four rules) and general explanation of mechanics of the firearm (glock 23), we progressed to shooting. I started by using diagrams to explain the sights, then had her practice with a blue gun of mine. I was using a weaver stance as opposed to a isosceles, but for the most part it just amounted to explaining proper grip and the push/pull system. She appeared to understand it all, so I moved to live fire.
I'm not trying to teach anything incredibly complicated or advanced here, just how to line up the sights and squeeze off an untimed shot at a moderate range. I started by having her dry fire. She had no inherent flinch, and was pretty stable for a first time shooter. I then fired a few rounds at twenty-one feet so she could see how it sounded and looked. I then had her line up the sights and simple remain indexed while I squeezed off a round.
This is where I ran into trouble. No matter what I tried to have her do, her rounds were not on target. I thought it might be cross-dominant, and had her use the right eye, the left eye, and both eyes, but none of it worked. I verified the problem was not with the weapon and used very close targets (3-7 feet), but she was still shooting consistently off. The problem did no appear to be in her grip as far as I can tell. I had her squeeze off the rounds herself (I didn't pull the trigger for her) and it just got worse from her flinch. I then had her squeeze the trigger while I held it aligned and it was accurate as ever.
To make a long story short, I never did solve the problem, We worked through about 100 rounds of .40, and while she became adept at loading, manipulating, clearing, etc of the weapon, I never got any accuracy. She did appear to have an awesome time(that never-ending grin that first time shooters get when they realize the gun won't bite them), but I'm not satisfied with my teaching. The only think I can think to do is find a laser sight so I can determine what she's doing with the sights, or perhaps use a firearm with a less canted grip (XD perhaps?). I don't want to take her back out there until I have some sort of plan, so I don't ingrain any more bad habits into her. What do the experts here think?