In this installment of Watch and Learn we’re going to look at handgun accuracy. Specifically, how to make your handgun accuracy a choice.
Why? The same reason we should be familiar with tourniquets and IFAKs. Because there is no way of knowing when we might have to deal with violence and/or injury.
It’s truly not enough just to own a gun and understand its basic function. Those are the first toddler steps.
It’s a reality that none of us can escape. We’re clueless about what we will face in the future. Tomorrow, a couple of weeks from now, years from now—we don’t know what life is going to throw at us. I’d venture to say that most of us wonder if we’ll ever be faced with a violent situation at some point in our lives. And, if you look at the statistics on lifetime victimization of a violent crime for the average citizen, the chances are respectable, at the least.
And that’s why we plan. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.
“I am a firm believer that every time you take a bad shot, you’re practicing being bad. Every time you take a perfect shot, you’re practicing perfection.” ~Daniel Shaw
It’s not a remote concept. In the last couple of years, firearm ownership has grown at record-making rates. More and more folks feel the need to own a gun; to be prepared. In my book, that is a very good thing. This is America, after all! It is our right as citizens to keep and bear arms. But rights come with responsibility, and the best thing gun owners can do is bear their arms responsibly.
Gun owners who are serious about their concealed carry and self-defense plan want to be as proficient as possible. And that’s where training comes in. We all can, (and should be), practicing on our own. Live fire on a range is one good way to practice, but dry fire is also a good option. Neither of those replaces learning from an expert, though. and that’s the value you’ll find in the GunMag Training video we’re taking a look at today.
Daniel Shaw explains and demonstrates how to increase your shooting accuracy by teaching how to:
- Understand your trigger pull.
- Present your handgun with an optimal grip.
- Use your body for recoil management.
Seriously, this is a very good instructional video. It’s meaty and thorough, and I hope you watch it.
Before the class gets to work, Daniel asks the students what they would like to accomplish during the course. Their main priorities?
- Getting on target faster, from the holster and from the ready position
- Better precision and consistency
- Tighter groups at longer distances
All worthy goals. And like the proverbial consumption of a whole elephant, it happens one bite at a time. The first step is to understand your own skills and capabilities. How good are you with your handgun, with no time limit?
In order to make this initial assessment, Daniel has the students stand three yards from their target and fire ten rounds at one of the small dots at the top. Once they’re done, Daniel takes a look and isn’t surprised to find that most of the groups had low shots with very few high ones. Some of it could be attributed to their optics, but he says they’ve all got the same problem—they’re all moving the gun.
Know your trigger press.
The most important thing in improving your accuracy is knowing how to press the trigger without interrupting the sights. If the gun moves when you press the trigger, the bullet isn’t going to strike where the sights were just at. The trick to keeping the gun still is to know what your trigger feels like and how much perceived pressure it takes to make the gun go bang. If you’re applying an outrageous amount of pressure to the trigger, it isn’t efficient and it’s only going to increase your gun movement. You want to apply the appropriate amount of pressure when your sights are good.
So how do you get that? Daniel demonstrates how.
It seems like a slow process, but there’s a reason for it. He starts with his finger on the trigger with a little slack. Taking up the slack, he slowly pulls the trigger, adding one pound at a time until he hears the click. He repeats the process and explains that this exercise helps you gain a greater understanding and perception of what five pounds of pressure (or however much pressure your specific trigger pull is) feels like. The students each fire ten shots, applying pressure to their triggers one pound at a time, and they all see an improvement in their groups.
Daniel suggests writing a paragraph about what your trigger feels like after you’ve done this several times. If you’re unable to describe it, then you’re probably just snapping the trigger to the rear, which may or may not be working for you. It’s better if you understand every ounce of the trigger and what it feels like.
Eventually, you won’t be doing it in first gear anymore.
Shooting Position
Recoil is like water. It’s always going to find the path of least resistance. Understanding this, we try and cut off the paths of resistance that we don’t want recoil to go through. Instead, we try to direct it back through our arms, with our elbows and shoulders taking a little bit of it before it moves down through our legs and eventually down into the ground.
With a good shooting position, stance, and grip, you can minimize the amount of mental and physical desire to fight and/or move the gun. Thus, you’ll have less recoil to deal with and minimized recoil decreases the need to move the gun even more. Even if you’re still moving the gun a bit when you press the trigger, your worst shot is still not going to be as bad as it used to be because it’s almost always equal and opposite of recoil.
What’s a good grip?
Getting a good grip is more than just making sure you’ve got a good, firm squeeze. It also involves where you hold the grip, how you use your digits, and how you torque the gun. Sometimes seeing what not to do helps us understand what to do. Daniel demonstrates how a grip that is too low on the gun will maximize recoil, flipping the muzzle up and back.
The preferred way to grip the gun is to hold it in such a way that you’re giving it as high of a pivot point as you can. It’s ok to get some skin bunched up under the slide, though folks with larger hands need to be careful not to get their skin too close to the slide. Slide bite is no fun. Still, get a nice, high grip and think about how your gun lines up with your forearm. It’s optimal to have them in line so all of the articulation with recoil goes into the wrist.
Now, as for how you use your fingers and thumbs, think about the position of the thumb of your non-firing hand. You’ll see a benefit if you point your thumb toward the target and lock it down. In that position, recoil is going to press directly back into your hand and back into the body. If your thumb is pointed up and you have a relaxed wrist, you’re going to have more articulation than if you have your thumb pointed toward the target.
And what about all of those fingers that aren’t your trigger finger? Daniel has some advice on this that I had never heard before. He says to keep the middle finger of the firing hand relaxed because the sympathetic nerve group in that area tends to move together. So, if you’re squeezing with the middle finger really hard you’re going to have very little dexterity in your trigger finger and you won’t have the finesse to do a proper reset. By relaxing that middle finger, you’ll be able to reduce your split times, and that alone helps you to be a faster shooter.
The non-firing hand is where you make up for relaxing that middle finger on the right hand. Wrap it around the grip and squeeze the palm and fingers very tightly. I’ll admit, this is probably confusing to read. I had to try it out for myself to get a better understanding. Just watch Daniel’s demonstration in the video and then try it for yourself. You’ll get it.
There is one last thing Daniel says about getting a good grip. It’s about how you apply pressure, or torque, into the gun from both hands. Think about it, if stretch your arms out in front of you, palms facing each other, you can see that your hands naturally rotate the palms down instead of up. You can put those biomechanics to your advantage by applying opposite rotating pressure to the gun, with each hand. So, your right hand applies pressure that rotates the gun to the left and down. Conversely, pressure from the left hand rotates the gun to the right and down. When both are applied together, you’re pinching the gun along the top of the frame and torquing them together.
Now, what about your elbows? Daniel says you don’t want them pointed toward the ground because the recoil will go up and back, which isn’t what you want. Instead, raise your elbows up and out. By doing so you’re adding more pressure to the center of the gun. Don’t lock them. When you point your elbows out, you can feel pressure across the top of your arms.
And your shoulders? They should be in a neutral position, back a little bit, and mostly relaxed because they’re going to take up some of your recoil after the elbows do.
Shooting Stance
You can shoot in any position, sure. But do you want to just leave it at that? Nah.
Daniel says that if he can have everything he wants in a shooting stance, he wants his upper body somewhat relaxed and the foot on his non-firing side forward and weighted. If you put your firing side foot forward with more weight on it, the recoil will make you want to rock back. But if you’ve got your non-firing foot forward, weighted, with the toes of both feet curing into the ground, your lower body is tense and will absorb the recoil.
Yes, curl your toes.
At this point, Daniel checks everyone’s grips. Then he has them fire the best ten shots they can do, paying attention to their grip.
Right away, he stops them to point out a habit he wants to nip in the bud. They’re firing one shot and then pulling straight back to the high ready. That’s not a habit they should allow to continue because in a defensive situation, how many shots is it going to take? Sometimes it takes only one shot and the situation is over. But sometimes it may be twenty and the threat is still fighting. It’s better to wait until it is certain that the threat has been stopped before coming back to the ready position. He says to get into the habit of asking yourself, “Do I need to shoot him again?” Follow through for every shot. It’s a sequence like this:
- Bang.
- Off the trigger.
- Back to the wall.
- Does he need more bullets?
- No.
- Finger off the trigger.
- Back to the ready position.
Debrief
It’s still early and the day and it’s already been packed full of information. So what have the students learned?
Jeremy says this is helping him to determine the balance between how much force to use for fighting recoil versus how much to relax to absorb it. He wants to understand the middle ground. It’s fairly counterintuitive to stay tense in the lower body and less tense in the upper body.
Other points they bring up include:
- Putting the shoulders back and bringing the gun up to his line of vision instead of hunching down to the gun.
- Adjusting the thumb on the non-firing hand to point toward the target.
- Curling the toes for a more sturdy stance.
One of the guys noticed that his groups went from bad to decent to worse. With all of the new things to focus on, it’s hard for his mind to integrate all of them. Daniel goes back to curling the toes. It’s hard to fix several things at once, but if you’ve got your toes curled, you’ve probably got everything else on the checklist.
What about you?
Did you learn anything new by watching this video? I sure did! Let us know in the comments below. Then check out more examples of the Watch and Learn series.
