Weer'd World

DON’T! Seriously JUST DON’T!

Follow the link and see Caleb give a very good run-down on some pretty unimpressive point-shooting training.

Honestly point-shooting is the handgun training equivalent of making a political statement about Israel being behind the 9-11 attacks. It reveals you as a crackpot and discounts anything you might have to further add to the subject.

If anybody has handled a classic pistol or a replica of a vintage firearm you may quickly see why point shooting might have ever been considered.

Take my Colt 1908 Vest Pocket .25. It was the Conceal Carry gun of the first half of the 20th Century. Small, compact, and light. Also the M1908 was striker-fired with a rounded profile to avoid snagging when drawing from a pocket, purse or concealed holster. To further the snag-free design the sights consisted of a trench ground into the top of the slide with a miniscule front blade placed in the muzzle-end. Even in optimum light and against a white background that sight picture is hard to see. When I’ve shot this gun against a black target you can’t see ANYTHING. Also in low light, again the sights vanish. Even bigger guns like the S&W Model 10 or the Miltary M1911s had skinny front sights that were mated to narrow and small rear sights. In good conditions you could make precise aimed shots, but in the stereotypical defensive gun use, such as being jumped in a dark ally, or having your door kicked at oh-dark-hundred those old-style sights aren’t going to help you much, so you’re just going to have to point the gun at your target and hope the shots land where they need to.

Today that isn’t the case. Most guns have big sights that allow for a clean and fast sight picture, and there are many options for contrast, be it simple black-and-white of 3-dot, Dot-and-bucket, or dot-the-I, all the way to fiber optics, tritium, to XS Express Sights, you can tailor your gun from extremely accurate sights to very fast and everything in between.

There’s a little bit of debate in the comments at weather Caleb is being fair for calling this training course out as crackpottery, but frankly the video alone damns it. Still I’m hardly mister rocket-ninja or Mr. Tiny groups, but I guarantee I can shoot that course of fire just as fast with better accuracy using a gun that has sights.

Further because sight picture is EASY to train on, if it comes down to a situation where there is a rapidly closing attacker you can make a VERY rough sight picture as quick as point shooting simply from the muscle memory of bringing your gun up to your line of sight .

I can see SOME of the logic behind this for a VERY beginner person, as when I first started shooting I’d bring the gun up, then hunt for that front sights THEN do my fine-alignment and initiate a trigger squeeze.

Teaching this crude-alignment is MUCH faster than that, but frankly its like teaching a baby to crawl better. Crawling is just an intermediate and hardly and end. (You’ll know if you spend any length of time crawling around on the floor)

The training is simple. Get an empty gun and find a safe point on a wall. Put the gun at low-ready and raise it to the target and align the sights. Keep doing it until you can get it faster and smoother.

You can add more by adding a draw from a holster, or draw from a concealed holster, or adding in a trigger squeeze. But at its simplest it burns almost no calories and is VERY easy. After a few hundred repetitions your sights will appear on target roughly aligned. In any of the argued situations for point-shooting this WILL be good enugh. Furthermore if you’re at contact or near-contact distances even somebody who simply knows how to discharge a gun will be able to point it in a rough enough direction to draw blood. At arms-length your target is a zillion MOA across, they are the proverbial broad-side-of-a-barn. Training isn’t all that necessary at that point, and retention of the firearm and melee attacks would be better served to add a tactical advantage.

I carry in an urban environment. There may come a time when I, or somebody around me is attacked in a crowded area. Either a spree killer made sensational by the news, or something as simple as a mentally ill street-person doing something both crazy and dangerous. If there are lots of innocent people around and you feel it is appropriate to use deadly force you had better damn well know where all your rounds are.

Best way to do that is to use your sights….either to align your gun with your target’s vital zone, or as a nostril hook!

Go over to Oleg’s and give this pic a good look over. See if you can see what I think is so controversial.
Continue reading →