Benefits of Practice: Shooters Log

You can have the best gun in the world, but if you don't get some range time in, chances are really good when the time comes to participate in a match or worse, defend yourself and your family, you're going to miss. We've all seen it time and again on police vs. bad guy shoot out videos, the stress of the situation, fear, adrenaline, the rush to seek cover, all combines and even though 20 or 30 rounds are exchanged nobody get's hit. Watching it on the news or YouTube you think how can that be? Fact is when you don't take the time to aim, you're probably going to miss. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being critical, I'm fairly certain that if someone was shooting at me I might react the same way, only you could add that I probably would be screaming like a little girl at the same time... just to distract the bad guy of course.

I don't pretend to be an expert at this stuff, just a participating observer really. Take for instance this past weekend, me and the family load up for a morning of some range time, fun shooting for my wife and youngest son but more of some serious practice time for me. It's amazing how fast that sight picture gets rusty and you loose a little of the skill you had worked hard to develop in just a few short weeks. Granted hitting an 8 inch steel plate at 30 feet is a lot harder than hitting a full-sized bad guy at 7 feet, but the basic skills and sight picture are the same either way. In a practice session, you don't have the same stresses that you feel when competing, and plinking at the range doesn't put you at the same stress level as if you were really being threatened by a bad guy. But simply put, the more you practice the more it becomes second nature. I was actually horrified by my shooting when we first started this weekend but felt a lot better by the time we were done.

My son came up with our mini stage exercise this time, let's call it "Stand Up and Clear the Rack", for lack of a better name. Starting in the seated position in a chair, hands clasped behind you head, gun unloaded and on a table about 4 feet in front of you, just out of reach. Upon the timer sound you stand, pickup and load your pistol, rack it and proceed to clear the 6 steel plates on the plate rack about 30 feet down range. Not a bad little quickie stage for a 9-year-old to come up with. My best time was 7.49 seconds, not great, but not bad either. I certainly feel better about how the practice session ended than the way it began. Another year or so and the squirt will be showing up old dad in these USPSA matches, you just watch.

The point is when you practice you get better, the more you practice the longer you retain the skills you have earned. And when it comes time to use those skills weather it's in a match or in an unwanted survival situation, you'll be glad you spent the time on the range. Besides, shooting is fun!

Be sure you take this sport seriously, guns are not dangerous, mishandling them is. Take a course from a certified instructor, learn the 4 basic rules of firearm safety:

Treat every firearm as if it were loaded.
Never allow the muzzle to point at anything you are not willing to see destroyed.
Be sure of your target and know what lies behind it.
Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are aligned on target.

As always, if your looking for a great place to shoot in the Ark-La-Tex, a local instructor or some new friends to shoot with, you’ll find it all at TexarkanaGunClub.org.

Stay safe, have fun and we'll see you on the range.

Previous Shooters Logs:

July 7, 2011
June 28, 2011
June 16, 2011
June 1, 2011
May 11, 2011
May 2, 2011