Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Handgun accuracy?

Practice. [bleep]-loads of practice. IMHO the key to accuracy is consistency. Consistent grip, consistent sight picture, consistent trigger pull. All of that comes from practice. A good coach can "leverage" your practice to help you get the most from it, especially early on, but in the end, efficiency-of-practice will only take you so far, eventually it takes volume of practice. Keeping the cost of practicing down will help you get more practice so handload for your handguns if you don't, and get a good rimfire as well.

Practicing with something similar to what you plan to carry helps some, but honestly, anything that helps you repeat a sight picture and a trigger pull over and over and over is going to benefit you. If possible, change guns. Shoot a rimfire some. Semi-auto. Magnum revolver. Change shooting disciplines. Each one will teach you something that will make you better at another.

Stance .. do what is comfortable for you and appropriate for the action and recoil of the gun you've chosen. The sort of loose modified Weaver -esque stance I use for heavy recoiling revolvers will often cause jams with a semi-auto. An isosceles stance leaves the elbows too stiff, the gun too centered, and if I don't bust my elbows, I'll probably take the front sight right between the eyes ... hard.

... just my opinion, of course. Fundamentally I'm a handgun hunter, not a defensive handgunner. Precision is everything. There's no making up for a miss by missing faster next time.

Flave I was just trying to say I place more importance on the trigger squeeze/press then sight alignment. Of course ideally I'd do everything perfect every time, but I'm pretty sure that'll never happen.

A good pellet pistol is a great tool (IMO) for showing weak spots in your training.

I gotta great idea. Why don't you guys have a shoot off with Flave, Clark, Travis?
I'd even pay money to see that.

W. Bill

My only point is that I wasn't trying to negate the value of trigger control.

You and I are in agreement that the subconscious goes a long way toward achieving trigger control.




Dave

Let's hope your shooting is better than your reading.




Dave

I'm down.




Dave

Form, sight picture, and trigger control,,,flowing the combination is what I work on at the range. If I dedicate my conscious to just 1 aspect, my groups will open up at longer distances...especially over 50 yards. Some disciplines come naturally to each shooter, so effort isn't really needed for that portion(say the grip). For me being able to comfortably flow with each shot/series, is when I shoot effortlessly the best.

A lot of good stuff there, Thanks Sarge and RH Clark.

Hell.......thanks to everybody else too
.
I'm looking at this endevor from a whole new perspective thanks to all the great advice......well.....cept for that knuckle-head that said to go out and buy a Glock,,,,grin. I am however going to get some snap caps for my K-22.

With all of yall's help and shooting about fifty rounds a day for several days now I think I'm well on my way.

Heck.....I might even try my luck on a few Bunnies in another month or two.

Trigger control is very important, and I'll agree that it is the problem most struggle with. But I'm still with Travis on this one, it all starts with sight alignment, and proper sight alignment comes from a focus on the front sight at the moment the trigger is pulled.

After you have proper sight alignment, then comes trigger control...anything else is putting the cart before the horse.

Finally, you have to have BOTH together to achieve any meaningful accuracy.

Its not the moment the trigger is pulled, its the moment the cap lights. Its "follow through"

A set of snap caps will show this pretty quick in that in the time the hammer falls to when it hits, one can screw up sight alignment or at the very least be off the target, even with a clean, even breaking trigger. SA revolvers are especially bad in this regard if one isnt used to them.

Its kind of akin to firing a bp hammer gun....

For me and my current state of my groups being just left of center. It's the trigger push that I developed, I just have to break that habit I picked up from lack of practice.

But you will notice I said "group". How I got the group was to focus on the front sight. Years ago it was no problem to draw my G 21 from the holster and hit a B27 target in the head. That and I haven't been to the gopher patch for over a year now. That was the best practice I ever had.

I'm going to go out now and give the 'Total Focus On Front Sight' technique a try.
I was practicing dry-sighting last night - and everything just seemed to follow and come together without thought or hesitation.

Epiphany!

Pretty good read on stages of competence. It kind of relates to this mostly due to the fact we are trying to reach the 4th stage (IMO of course).

http://www.businessballs.com/consciouscompetencelearningmodel.htm

Shot two "bad guys" center mass last night with simunition rounds. I was getting charged by one and still focused on front sight and hit dead center chest. Wasn't thinking as much about trigger control in that situation. In the end, I "lived".

Interesting on the front sight focus. Opposite of most shotgunning advice where you are often told to focus on the target and not the sights. Granted it is apples and oranges, just interesting how there are completely different approaches to hitting targets.

I am far from a good hand gun shot. I can chase cans around with my M15 at 20 yards or so, but have never spent much time shooting much further. I need to start! Bunnies would be a blast!

You are more than welcome my friend. I've always found it useful, when wanting to learn anything, to go straight to the top guys in that field if at all possible.

Important point there. The really good and fast shooters I've known seem to have committed some or all of the fundamentals to the subconscious. They know by feel if their firing grip is good when they clear leather. They have a degree of sight alignment, appropriate to the task at hand, visualized before the gun comes up into their line of sight. They automatically make adjustments to achieve this and begin the press w/o thinking about it. It all flows together effortlessly.

Bluedreaux has posted this before. It's a very good drill for fundamentals.


https://pistol-training.com/drills/dot-torture

Each shooter must build his or her own internal "clock". The target can be thought of as the same size regardless of distance. 8" or so. The only thing that changes is time. It measures the distance. A smaller "8" takes more time on the front sight. going faster than your "clock" will only be a miss.

My grandma can hit bunnies at 50 yards---- it just takes her longer.