pdb

So now it’s my friend Caleb’s turn to point out obnoxious point-shooting fail. I know I keep telling you people to pony up for some pistol training if you carry regularly, but not all schools are created equal. Picking the wrong school can be even worse than getting no instruction at all.

Let’s have a look at that video, shall we?

First, notice the lack of trigger finger discipline by the student. This is just plain unacceptable and should be taken care of before the student handles live rounds on the line. Also, they have the student shooting into the gravel at five feet with NO EYE PROTECTION. If you see something like this go down at your class, this is where you ask for a refund and leave quickly.

That’s just the safety problems. Note that the student’s grip, arm position and footing are limp and highly variable as she shoots. You can’t count on having the time to assume a ideal stance and grip in a confrontation, but it’s foolish to practice as if you can’t.

This is the biggest problem with training to shoot unsighted fire only. The traditional, industry standard method of focusing on the fundamentals of maintaining a correct sight picture via a strong consistent grip, rigid arm position and rehearsed footwork is a far better platform to build on than point shooting because a mastery of these fundamentals gives you all the tools you need to shoot without sights. If you are a fast and accurate shot with your sights, you can do coarse yet fast shooting without your sights by using the body index and grip that you’ve learned.

The body points, the eye verifies.

Point shooting, on the other hand, does not lend itself to a later concentration on accuracy. You literally can’t get there from here. It is a developmental dead end. (Note the video never shows us her paper groups).

Like I said before, there are no shortcuts in learning how to shoot. It’s not even that big an investment! A total n00b can get a thorough grounding in the fundamentals in a single weekend of competent instruction. Hone that with a couple evenings a week of holster presentations and dry fire, and a few boxes of ammo a month, and you’ll be ahead of the game.