Most accurate handgun platform...for noobs

[jstert]

if bring precisely specific, s&w, k frame, steel, 38sp, revolver loaded with wadcutters. if the trainee stopped here, he/she would be decently armed.

however, as many others have suggested for good reason, any 22lr handgun or a single action revolver chambered in any non-magnum caliber are excellent learning tools too.

 

[.38 Special]

I suppose we have different experiences then. I havent found teaching most beginners to shoot DAO, as long as they had the strength to pull the trigger, and for the most part, thats never been an issue. Add some regular dry fire to the mix, and things only get better as muscle tone quickly gets better.

And as I always have to ask, for those of you who call a DA trigger crappy, how much do you actually shoot them that way, and if you do, why cant you shoot them well? Ive always found that when trying to shoot deliberate groups, I normally shoot tighter groups when I shoot my DA guns DAO, and that included the autos, so I really have to question what problems youre having that makes them crappy.

Or are you one who has to have a tuned, SA trigger in order to be able to shoot well? From my experience, thats usually where the complaints come from when this comes up.

If you teach someone to shoot DAO, they will be further ahead than someone who learns SA, and can much easier adapt to SA later, than those who do the reverse. And the reverse only becomes much more difficult down the road, as the caliber increases.

This is along the same lines as teaching beginners to shoot long guns from field positions than from shooting off a bench. Learn to do things right from the start, and that little extra work, pays dividends, even in the short run, and you will be way ahead in the long run.

I agree with some of that, and disagree with some as well.

Firstly, I don't necessarily believe that DA triggers are by default "crappy". They're just different. (There are, of course, crappy DA triggers. A good DA trigger is smooth across its entire travel, with a constant weight, while a crappy trigger, well, isn't.) I do argue that DA triggers are more difficult to master, and so should be avoided at first. The most important things while learning are to keep the sights aligned while pressing the trigger, and to ignore recoil. Anything which interferes with those two components interferes with learning. And yes, it is possible to learn with a DA trigger. It's also possible to learn with full house .357 Magnum loads. Both extend the learning curve, and frankly, I regard "If you learn a DA trigger first, the SA trigger will be easy" exactly as I regard "If you learn .357 Magnum recoil first, .22lr recoil will be easy". Both are technically true, but...

Next - and I apologize for being offensive, but there's no truly polite way of putting this - nobody gets closer to a gun's potential with a long heavy trigger than with a short light one. Competitive riflemen never demand a DA style trigger. The pistoleros winning Olympic medals do it with triggers measured in grams, not pounds. Literally everyone involved in precision shooting would laugh if you suggested they would improve their scores if they added an inch of travel to their trigger pulls.

Now, wonderful shooting can be done with DA triggers, and no one can consider himself an all-around handgunner until he has mastered them, but arguing that they are superior for slowfire accuracy is demonstrably wrong - and I say that as a fellow who has literally hundreds of thousands of DA pulls under his belt, and the trophies to prove it.

 

[Varminterror]

The best thing about shooting DAO is, a.) it forces the shooter to focus on the important things while shooting, the sights. And b.) it builds and maintains the necessary muscle tone and trigger control that is necessary to be able to shoot well.

These claims simply aren’t true.

The DAO trigger forces the shooter to focus more on trigger management, effectively distracting them from focusing better onto other fundamentals of marksmanship.

Second, despite these claims being made commonly online and at gunshop counters for generations, it’s absolutely not true that increasing trigger difficulty improves resultant skill, or transferable skill. Generations of training records disproves this myth in both counts, and certainly proves out the increased difficulty in early development SLOWS the overall development. Yes, shooters are able to learn the fundamentals of marksmanship with DA/DAO triggers, but DESPITE the increased difficulty of trigger management, not because of it.

 

[trackskippy]

If you want to maintain the sight alignment, you focus on the sights, not the trigger. At least I do, and it works great.

If you think a DA trigger forces you to focus on the trigger, youre doing it wrong.

And for me, learning to shoot DAO with those types of guns has improved my shooting overall, and across the board, handgun and long gun, SA, DA, all sorts of triggers. I dont worry about the trigger, my focus is always on the sights and/or target. And as Ive said in the past, if youre thinking about what the trigger is doing, youre not focused on the sights.

If you cant shoot a DA trigger well, dont blame the gun or the trigger, look in the mirror, and youll see the problem.

I think some people just need to actually get out and shoot more, and not just with things that are easy for them to shoot and do. You dont do yourself any favors, if you stop at the easy stuff, and not continually push yourself forward and continue to learn.

 

[Varminterror]

I think some people just need to actually get out and shoot more

Yes. New shooters which aren’t well trained or practiced with any firearm do benefit from gaining training and experience.

But the “if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball” mentality isn’t terribly productive for training new shooters.