Pistol training and marksmanship

[Kodiaz]

I just got a 1911 2 weeks ago. I've been going to the range every week since i got it. I've gone 3 times my groups are getting smaller every trip(last time out 5" at 20 yds.). I shoot about 200 rounds with the 1911 and 50 or so with my Ruger .40(I've had it 4 1/2 years I know it inside and out). I've never thought of myself as a good shot with a pistol. But I've only seen 1 person in 4 years of going to the range shoot better than me. At ten yds I'm shooting a 2" group. I see people shooting in the other lanes with targets at self defense range (3 yds) and they shoot 6 - 7 in groups and usually worse. These people aren't shooting from a draw either.

Is that supposed to be accurate fire? Is that really good enough?

I shoot at distance because my uncle (ex Army lots of pistol trophies) asks how I'm shooting at 25 yds. What happens if someone grabs your kid or wife how could you take the shot if at 3 yds you shoot a 6" group. Am I missing something.

BTW I was at the range Sat. and my Kimber(TLE 2) jammed. I saw this as a good opportunity for clearing the gun and getting the next shot out fast. I opened the slide got the jammed round out and the next round fed bad so I did the same and the 2nd round fed bad to. I popped the mag cleared the chamber reloaded and hit all 4 of the outside diamonds on my target with my followup shots(7 yds). Is it common to jam and have the next round jam when you rack the slide. I don't know if maybe I limp wristed that round or if it just didn't feed right. But having the 2 following rounds not get in the chamber really got me riled up. Is that a common thing. Are you supposed to drop the mag. if your weapon jams or are you supposed to try and get the next round in. This happened with my Kimber TLE 2 in stainless I haven't had the gun long but that was the only time it jammed. I clean my guns at the range and by clean I mean field strip clean until it looks new and then add oil as per instructions.

 

[ShackleMeNot]

Is your goal defensive shooting skills or tiny groups?

 

[444]

That is the same question I have.

Defensive pistol shooting does not always require tight groups. In fact, it might be argued that hitting a man twice, six inches apart is better than firing two shots in the same hole. Put another way, there usually only a certain amount of accuracy needed for most defensive shooting. Hitting someone multiple times in the chest, very quickly is plenty accurate.
Another rule of thumb for defensive type shooting practice is that there is always a delicate balance between speed and accuracy. Picture a scale with speed on one side and accuracy on the other. Your goal is to make the scale balance. If you put more on the speed side, you need to take an equal amount off the accuracy side for a balance. If you increase accuracy, your speed must go down for a balance. If you are shooting tight groups, you arn't shooting fast enough. You want to be shooting groups as fast as you can that are about the size of your open hand (hand span groups). If you shoot groups smaller than that, speed up. If you shoot groups larger than that, slow down and pay more attention to marksmanship and less to speed. As your skills improve, you will fire more accurately, faster. You will also notice that as distance increases, your basic marksmanship skills come more and more into play. At 3 yards, you can probably hit COM without using the sights and with a big trigger slap. At 50 yards, you better have a near perfect sight picture, sight alignment, and trigger press. In between, the scale shifts slowly from speed to accuracy as you get further away. Again, with practice the balance can swing more toward speed.
More accuracy is always good, but it can't be obtained at the expense of speed. You have to always shoot as fast as you can accurately, keeping in mind how much real accuracy you need. Also keep in mind that you can't miss fast enough to win.
If you have a shot at a tiny piece of bad guy behind a hostage, you need to shoot only as fast as you can hit that target: missing is not an option, but you don't have all day. If you have a guy at 7 yards facing you, you can speed things up because putting bullets in his COM doesn't take extreme accuracy.
Hopefully, you get the idea.
All that being said, you should practice (every time you go to the range) at least some precision shooting drills where your goal is to put every shot in one hole. It is best to practice a drill like this immediately after you shoot another drill that is all about speed. In other words, you teach yourself to switch gears from all speed to all accuracy.
Try some of these drills to keep your shooting sessions fresh and interesting. http://www.kuci.uci.edu/~dany/firearms/all_drills.html
You will notice that some of the standards listed on that page also have times listed for you to strive for. Obviously, this is eventually going to require you to introduce a shot timer into your training.
Comparing yourself to others by looking at their targets is fine. But, you are only comparing one half of the equation: accuracy. Speed is the other half that you need to introduce into your training. Then compare accuracy AND time.
Of course, if you arn't interesting in defensive shooting and are only interested in bullseye pistol shooting, I apologize: make every shot perfect.
No matter what you are shooting, firmly establish the habit of follow through, and resetting the trigger. DO NOT, EVER allow the habit of allowing your finger to fly off the trigger between shots to establish itself. RESET THE TRIGGER.

 

[Blackhawk 6]

Is your goal defensive shooting skills or tiny groups?

Are you suggesting the two are mutually exclusive?

 

[444]

Yes

 

[Blackhawk 6]

444- My question was directed at ShackleMeNot. Were you answering for him or for yourself?

 

[444]

Ok, sorry. I was answering for myself.
The training I have had (which also makes sense to me) says that for the vast majority of defensive shooting, there is no reason to shoot tiny groups. If you are shooting tiny groups, you need to speed up until your groups are approx. the size of your handspan (COM).
Shooting tiny groups is all about accuracy, speed is an issue also.
Of course if you can shoot at the cyclic rate of the gun, and still shoot tiny groups (Ed McGivern), then you have arrived and the rest of us bow down to your expertise.
As an example of what I am talking about: Would you rather put three shots through the right lung or put one shot in each lung and one in the heart ? Would you rather put two shots through the right ventricle or put one shot in each ventricle ?
Keep in mind that you are not purposely trying to hit these organs and you are not purposely trying to shoot big groups: but, if you are shooting as quickly as you can shoot hand span sized groups (and you are putting them in the COM), this will be the result.
Granted, this is probably icing on the cake: if you put a bullet through the right ventricle, would it make any kind of real difference if you also put one in the left ? Probably not, but you see my point ?

 

[Blackhawk 6]

The key to being a good defensive shooter is (intuitively) understanding the degree of speed and the degree of accuracy each situation requires and then being able to deliver both the degree of speed and the degree of accuracy required. Some situations require more accuracy than speed, others require more speed than accuracy. Was North Hollywood an accuracy problem, a speed problem or both for the LAPD?

We do not have the luxury of selecting the time, place or circumstance of a lethal force encounter. What is required is the development of a solid set of skills that allows us to respond to the widest variety of possible situations adequately. Accurate shooting is a part of that skill set.

All too often people develop a preconceived notion of what "their" defensive shooting encounter will be. Generally, it is the full frontal shot on a mugger and 5 yards or less. They then set about developing (perfecting?) a skill set that allows them to address that threat...and few others. Draw, fire a few rounds, cover the group with the open hand, exchange high-fives with other shooters on the line and repeat. This may be adequate, then again it may not.

A quick example where accuracy trumped speed in a defensive shooting situation. Scott Reitz frequently tells a story of an off-duty officer whose wife was grabbed by badguy the officer had encountered while on duty. The bad guy held a knife to the officer's wife's throat while using her as a shield and graphically detailed what his plans were for the officer's wife. The officer drew his 2" .38 and at relatively close range attempted to shoot the bad guy. He struck his wife in the head, killing her.

I found it surprising that someone whose signature line identifies them as an instructor for a fairly well-known and reputable training organization would discourage accurate shooting. If the assertion was that accurate shooting is only part of the defensive shooting equation then I whole-heartedly agree. If the assertion was that accurate shooting has no place in the defensive shooting equation then I strongly disagree. Hence, my request for clarification.

 

[444]

Some situations require more accuracy than speed, others require more speed than accuracy."

Yet, we really can never have too much of either one. You can never shoot too accurately or too fast unless you are doing one at the expense of the other. Thus, it is a lifetime pursuit to always shoot faster AND more accurately while at all times shooting within your own limits. This is one of the things that makes shooting fun and interesting. You will never reach the point where you can't shoot faster or more accurately. So, there is always something else to strive for. If you are the best in the world, everyone else will be trying to beat you. Eventually, someone will. Because there is no limit on your skills: you can always get better.

 

[Kodiaz]

Ok well ask one question and it spawns other questions. Ok at 25 yds I shoot slow. When I bring the target in to 7 yds I shoot fast, as fast as I can line up the 3 dots on the target thats usually a 2 or 3" group. And the first shot is dead on. I don't have my CCW yet I plan on taking the class and sending the paperwork this week. I usually see trouble a long way off and never have any problems. Why I never got my CCW before.


Jan. 1st I was driving home from my buddies house at 12:20 AM, I had gone to the range earlier in the day. I'm making a left and a woman falls flat on her face from a moving vehicle. From the passenger side. I pull in front of the vehicle call 911 and get out of my van to see if the lady is ok. Before I had cut off the vehicle I figured 1 of 3 things is going on.

1. It is the 1st and this lady is totally trashed and she did something dumb.

2 There are bad characters in the vehicle and the lady jumped out to avoid some worse fate somewhere else.

3. Some bad characters in the vehicle pushed the lady out of the car while it was moving.

I got out of my van because the 911 operator had a bunch of questions so the women was standing off to the side of the road on a phone there were 2 young(early twenties) guys in the car the women was in her mid to late 30's I sat on the rear bumper opened my van and fiddled with my tools while I chambered rounds in my pistols discreetly. then I went back to sitting on my bumper talking to the dispatcher. The 2 guys get out of the car and head towards the woman. They start talking to her but I'm not close enough to hear what they say. Their body language doesn't look right though so I pay attention to what they are up to I don't see any obvious weapons. My plan is if they try something on the lady my guns are in the back door I can unlock the door and let them know to stop until the police show up. If they make a play for me I would hop in the van drive 50 yds then get out and retrieve my weapons. I spent the whole wishing I had gotten my CCW. All this takes about 2 minutes. The dispatcher understood that I didn't like what I was seeing so at the 3 minute mark 6 police cars showed up. I approached the 2nd car and let him know what I had seen. Then after a couple of minutes I spoke to another officer and I was told I could leave.


Ok back to shooting another thing I do is I use those rifle grid targets with 1 large center diamond and 4 smaller diamonds in the corners. I'll randomly alternate from one diamond to the next and I do this as fast as I can put my sights on target as well

 

[RiverwinoIA]

you need to speed up until your groups are approx. the size of your handspan (COM).

so, the ideal defensive handgun paper target would be a black dot the size of a fist or so?
First, work on consistently hitting nothing but black, then work on speed as your skills build?

 

[444]

Ideally, human adversaries don't have any black dots on them, or scoring rings. IMO (totally uneducated, never been in a gunfight) you need to at least shoot at a silhouette target and at best shoot at a three dimensional dummy wearing clothes. You need to understand that shooting COM doesn't nessessarily mean the center of the chest. If the target is facing 90 degrees to you, you need to shoot COM. If his head is facing another direction you need to shoot COM etc. If you shoot on a flat target with scoring rings, anything else will be forign to you. Placing the rounds COM is the goal. Scoring rings, and black dots don't add anything to this IMO>

 

[1911 guy]

I use paper plates

For handgun targets, I use a 8" and a small 4" paper plate. I tack the Lg. one about chest high on the berm, Sm. one about head high. Start close, shooting slow enough to keep all shots on the smooth bottom of the plate, ie, no periferal hits. When you can put four or five center and one or two head in a few seconds, move back a couple yards. Once in a while, I put another plate at groin level and practice pelvic girdle shots.

 

[crofrog]

Placing the rounds COM is the goal. Scoring rings, and black dots don't add anything to this IMO>

I'd say that placing round's into vital organ's is the goal. There is a lack of these directly at COM on a frontal view of a person. I try to aim for the triangle between the bottom of the throat and the nipples.

As for target's I really like the ANT-4 from letargets.com they are pretty cool.
http://letargets.com/html/targets2.html
The lines for the vital organs are hard if not impossible to see unless the target is close to you.

Having trained with tactical repsonse in the past there was a demand in the class for both speed and accuracy. We where repeatedly told to only shoot as fast as we could make hit's. In fact any misses had to be made up. We also worked on a 11"x19" steel plate out at 100yd's.

So not to answer for ShackleMeNot but what I took away from the class on how fast to shoot was shoot as fast as you can shoot him in the heart or in the eye socket, and that fist size groups at whatever range you are shooting at is good enough.

Chris

 

[Kodiaz]

I usually get 1 silhouette when I go to the range. I have a good understanding of human anatomy and when I do use a silhouette. I almost never shoot its COM x ring. A lot of these targets puts the com under the sternum. This area is close to vital organs (heart lungs) but If you hit the center of most silhouette COM x ring the only thing you will hit directly will be the spine and only if you are shooting straight at the person and you hit the middle. If you are off 1 to 2 inches you will hit no vital organs. I aim for the sternum, any head shot on the center of the face will take out the spine. A hit between the eyes just above the eyes or on the nose will cause an instant stop. Now if have flanked your BG and are shooting into his side COM then is fine because that bullet has a very good chance of hitting all kinds of vital organs and arteries.

Thanks for the input this is turning into a really good thread.

 

[ShackleMeNot]

Are you suggesting the two are mutually exclusive?

Yes... and no.

Marksmanship is an important part of defensive shooting skills but it is only a small part. Unfortunately too many shooters concentrate all their time and energy on shooting smaller and smaller groups at the expense of learning any actual tactics that will matter much more in an armed confrontation.

If you are shooting tiny groups it probably means you aren't moving and it is unrealistically expecting that your attacker is going to stand still while you shoot holes in them. In reality you should be moving and your target will probably be moving as well. Watching tiny group shooters struggle with their first force on force exercise is telling. Even with all their marksmanship abilities they aren't ready for the dynamic nature of realistic defensive gun use.

We call the obsession with tiny groups "marksmanship masturbation". If your goal is to be a Bullseye champion than yes, your tiny groups will matter. For most defensive encounters good hits are "good enough". I strive for fist size groups at any distance.

Maybe an analogy will help explain exactly what I mean.

Is being able to punch hard an important part of fighting skills? Well, yes... and no. You need to be able to hit hard enough to do damage to your opponent but if all you do all day is stand still and hit a heavy bag are you really training any applicable fighting skills? You can be the world’s hardest puncher and you will get killed in a street fight if you can't apply that hitting in a dynamic situation against a living, breathing, resisting attacker.

 

[Blackhawk 6]

Orginally Posted By ShackleMeNot
Marksmanship is an important part of defensive shooting skills but it is only a small part. Unfortunately too many shooters concentrate all their time and energy on shooting smaller and smaller groups at the expense of learning any actual tactics that will matter much more in an armed confrontation.

I can't say I disagree with that. Thank you for clarifying.

 

[rchernandez]

At our shooting range in Memphis, you can sign up with the IDPA folks who shoot every Tuesday nights and the Bullseye League that shoots Friday nights...give it a years worth of "intense" participation and after that you'll feel adequately and accurately trained for self defense that carrying anything larger than a .22lr is overkill

 

[gearbox]

The second most reliable way to clear a jam:
Drop mag
Rack slide twice
Insert fresh mag
Rack slide
Shoot


It will clear everything but a broken extractor. Always have a fresh mag.

The MOST reliable way to clear a jam:
New York reload

 

[gearbox]

As far as accuracy goes, the groups you say you're getting are fine for combat. Put them to the test in an IDPA competition.

 

[ShackleMeNot]

I found it surprising that someone whose signature line identifies them as an instructor for a fairly well-known and reputable training organization would discourage accurate shooting. If the assertion was that accurate shooting is only part of the defensive shooting equation then I whole-heartedly agree. If the assertion was that accurate shooting has no place in the defensive shooting equation then I strongly disagree. Hence, my request for clarification.

I don't know how I skipped over this post the first time I read through this thread. I'm glad I caught it this time.

I like accurate shooting. I'm a big fan. I do a pretty good job of it myself and I require it of my students. It is a fundamental part of carrying a gun for defense. We are responsible for every round that leaves our barrels. Those rounds that don’t hit the bad guy are going to hit something else. Also, those rounds that don’t hit the bad guy don’t help you solve the threat, which is why you started shooting in the first place.

BUT, as I already stated in my previous reply above it's an issue of opportunity cost. Ammo, time and training funds are limited for most of us. What is the benefit of spending the time and money shrinking your groups at 10 yards from 2 inches to 1.5 inches? I submit that it is minimal.

The time could be better spent developing empty hand skills or attending formal Force on Force training to get better Mindset training and decision making skills. Most shooters spend far too much energy on static marksmanship at the expense of everything else.

 

[John Hicks]

This is a good thread. My shooting buddies discuss things like this all the time (one does IDPA, another is a cop), and the debate is always informative.

I've always strived for accuracy, probably because I got started shooting in Boy Scouts and tight groups were always the most important thing after safety.

but I see my friends shoot fast and I know I need to work on it.

It was said earlier: different need for different scenarios.

A "hostage" standoff might give you a lot of time for a well placed shot. If you have to draw and shoot, then you'd better be good and fast. If it's one-on-one and the bad guy is 7 feet away, you may just have to be fast.

I guess the bottom line is: train for the whole spectrum. Slow-accurate shots, as fast as you can shoot, and in the middle. You never know which one you'll need, and chances are, you won't even get to think about it.

jh

 

[garrettwc]

so, the ideal defensive handgun paper target would be a black dot the size of a fist or so?
First, work on consistently hitting nothing but black, then work on speed as your skills build?

I use 3X5 index cards with the short 3" side oriented to the top and bottom. At 5 yds my goal is 5+ shots on the card in under 2 seconds from the aimed in position. Fast and accurate.

I agree with 444 up to a point. I think being able to shoot smoothly and accurately will allow you to shoot fast. If you are not accurate when you shoot slowly then you will miss more when you speed up.

When my shooting detiorates and most of the holes start getting off the 3x5 card and towards the outer edge of an 8" circle, I stop. I then go to slow deliberate practice front sight, press, follow through. I'll practice slow bullseye style, or do dry practice until the groups tighten back up. Then I'll speed up again.

 

[444]

"I agree with 444 up to a point. I think being able to shoot smoothly and accurately will allow you to shoot fast. If you are not accurate when you shoot slowly then you will miss more when you speed up."

That is the whole point of my post. You speed up UNTIL your groups open up past handspan size. As you practice more and your groups again start to shrink, you speed up again to the point your groups begin to open up. You contantly maintain a balance between speed and accuracy: always trying to take both to new levels.

 

[Tequila_Sauer]

"Location: Palm Beach County"


Kodiaz, where do you shoot in PBC? I know there's one in Delray, but I never go. I usually hit up Reviere on Copans Rd down south. It bugs me that there are so few gun ranges/shops in Palm Beach.

Anyway, my only concern in my shooting is being able to hit accurately under pressure. I'm confident in my abilities at the range, but I'm standing in the open, focusing, wearing gear, aiming slowly, and squeezing off rounds. If someone is in my place, 90 percent of that is gone, it's me, grabbing my g/f and phone, finding cover, running through a brief check of the weapon, and aiming to fire if he decides to come into our bedroom.

The difference is as wide as Preseason vs. Playoffs. And I'll never know how I'll perform until, God forbid, that big game comes around and I need to act.