A couple people had expressed interest in this topic, and I have a bit of extra time for a couple days, so here goes:
Bona fides: I am a former infantry NCO and sniper, hunter, competitive shooter, reloader, hobby gunsmith, sometimes firearms trainer and currently work in a gun shop, mostly on the paperwork/compliance side. Back in the day, was a qualified expert with every standard small arm in the US inventory circa 2003 (M2, 4, 9, 16, 19, 249, 240B, 21, 24, 82 etc.), and today hang around the 75th percentile of USPSA classifications. I've shot Cap-and-Ball, Trap and Sporting Clays badly; Bullseye and PRS somewhat better and IDPA/USPSA/UML/Two-gun with some local success. Been active in the 2A community since the mid-90s, got my first instructor cert in high school, and have held a CPL for almost twenty years now.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert in every aspect of firearms, there's huge areas that escape my knowledge base, but if you've got questions I'll do my best to answer.
Technical questions
Gun control proposals for feasibility
Industry
Training
Wacky opinions
General geekery
Some competition links (not my own) just for the interested.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=U5IhsWamaLY&t=173
https://youtube.com/watch?v=93nEEINflXE
https://youtube.com/watch?v=utcky0zq10E
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Notes -
Have a question on training and self-evaluation. I got some basic pistol courses and been practicing on the range from time to time for a while, and I think I am doing kinda OK, but I see various flaws in my shooting and I am not sure how to proceed to get better. Most of non-beginner trainings I've see around are for things like concealed carry and situations that arise from that, which I am currently less interested as I do not plan to carry, at least for now. I feel like just books and videos can only get me so far because they won't show me what I am in particular doing wrong or how I could fix my flaws. Any advice on this and how to improve? Am I thinking about it wrong or missing something?
What sort of shooting are you trying to get better at? Just basic pistol marksmanship?
Yes, mostly marksmanship, target shooting.
You can trawl Youtube, there's a fair bit there, often quite specific. How to grip a gun, how to pull a trigger etc. There's a lot of discussion on the competition shooting subreddit, mostly action shooting, but other disciplines as well.
A warning, many people think in terms of a technique that they learn once and it changes the way they shoot. Reality is much slower. Takes time and reps to build skills. Some people have more hand-eye coordination and need less, but it's still significant. Principles are more important than techniques. The principle is to pull the trigger without moving the sights. Whatever lets you do that is "correct".
Another is measurable results, and tracking those over time. I keep a range journal, my targets get filed, notated etc. For simple accuracy, this can be measured in group size at distance. Four inches at seven yards is decent. Four inches at fifteen yards is good. Four inches at twenty-five is the "practical accuracy" standard. Anyone can achieve this relatively quickly (a year or two) with the right training and practice, some much faster.
Finally, consider private training. It can be surprisingly affordable, depending on area and instructor. I've done this a couple times, and found it some of my better spent training budget. You get so much more when it's just you, one friend and a coach. One day of personalized coaching is worth a week of big classes, IMO.
what's your thoughts on dry-fire as a low-cost training supplement?
Dry fire is the training. If you're supplementing with it, you're not doing enough. 9:1 dry to live fire is my rule of thumb.
The way I explain it is dry fire is class, live fire is quiz day. That's when you find out if you learned what you needed to in dry fire.
A very interesting rule, which crystalizes a lot of things I've been hearing lately. I don't know if I'm just dense, or if this is a more recent development, but this really didn't seem to be the general advice when I was coming up in the gun culture. I wish it had been.
The recent development has been gun culture 2.0 slowly rediscovering sport as a test bed for training practices. Serious competitors have always trained like this, it just wasn't common knowledge or how civilians were trained. Civilians looked to military or police training, not sport. Now there's a lot more cross-training. The sport guys train the tactical guys on raw weapon handling and the tactical guys train the sport shooters how not to die while you're doing all that fancy shit. Special forces units are contracting top sport shooters to come train their guys and design parts of the training curriculum. This in turn feeds back to the trainers and their civilian clients. You've got military guys joining the sports, and sport shooters joining the military (Army Marksmanship Team, etc.).
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