The Cornered Cat
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October 28, 2013

Later this week, I will have the next installment of the trigger awareness series. If you haven’t already done the first two installments, please scroll down and get them. It really will help your shooting if you practice this stuff.

Meanwhile, I have an excellent question from a friend who wants to know more about what to tell a new shooter – especially a new shooter interested in self-defense. I will tackle that question soon, but meanwhile, I wonder what you think. What would you say? How would you help your friends become more aware of how serious the decision to carry a firearm really is?

In either case, watch this space!

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TAE #2: Watch the Wobble
October 27, 2013

This is the second in a series of simple exercises you can do to improve your trigger control. These exercises will help you become more aware of your trigger finger and better able to control its motions. No matter how fast you can draw or how dynamically you can move, you will not be prepared to defend yourself with a firearm until you can hit your target reliably. You cannot hit your target reliably until you develop good trigger control, and that’s what this series is about.

Trigger Awareness Exercise #2: Watch the Wobble

Start with an empty firearm within the confines of your safe dry fire routine. Check to be sure it is really empty, then choose a safe direction.

Hold the firearm on target without pressing the trigger. Look at your sights and see how they line up with your target. Can you get the sights perfectly aligned with your target? How long can you keep them perfectly aligned? (See this blog post if you’re not sure what “perfectly aligned” looks like.)

Because human beings are not robots, you will see that perfection eludes you. No matter how carefully you hold the gun, your front sight will always have a slight tremble or wobble in it. This is normal and not a cause for concern. The wobble tends to get stronger when you’re tired, when you’re under the influence of caffeine or other stimulants, and as you age. It gets very strong indeed when you have a lot of adrenaline in your system, such as when you are excited or frightened. In other words, if you are practicing for self-defense, you need to become very familiar with your wobble, because we know it will be there if you use the gun to defend yourself. Fortunately, even a severe wobble really doesn’t matter at all — as long as you know what to do about it.

Before we go any further, let’s try one more thing. With your sights aligned carefully on the target, press the trigger just as slowly and just as carefully as you did in the first exercise. Watch the front sight as you gently, smoothly, bring the trigger all the way to the rear. How motionless can you hold the front sight while you bring the trigger to its break point? Can you keep it from moving even a tiny little bit?

As you press the trigger, you will see a slight wobble – the same size and type of wobble you noticed while you were simply holding the gun on target. That’s okay. However, you might see some additional movement, with the front sight moving abruptly or dropping dramatically just before the trigger ‘clicks.’ That’s not okay. When I talk about accepting the wobble, I am talking about accepting the first type of movement, that slight tremor in the sights. I am not talking about accepting the second type of movement, the one that allows your front sight to take a dive just as you finish pressing the trigger.

Fortunately, it isn’t hard to learn how to deal with the wobble.

First, let’s talk about what doesn’t work, and why. Many people yank the trigger back suddenly during a brief moment when they see the front sight wobble into perfect alignment with the target. This doesn’t work well because it often sends the shot low. A right-handed shooter with this habit tends to produce targets with a lot of shots that hit low and to the left, while a left-hander doing the same thing makes her shots hit low and to the right. When a shooter has this habit, she’ll often produce a target that has a “fanning” effect, making a pattern like a pizza slice fanning out toward the bottom left (or bottom right) of her target.

sm-pizza

Mmmmm, yummy shooting.

To avoid seeing that slice of pizza on your target, try this instead. Accept the wobble without fighting! Simply keep realigning the sights while you press the trigger as smoothly as you can. As long as you press the trigger smoothly, the wobble does not matter at all. It’s just a benign natural artifact, and nothing to worry about.

Watch this space for the next installment.

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TAE #1: Feel The Trigger
October 26, 2013

Today I begin a series of simple exercises you can do to improve your trigger control. This series will help you become more aware of your trigger finger and better able to control its motions. No matter how fast you can draw or how dynamically you can move, you will not be prepared to defend yourself with a firearm until you can hit your target reliably. You cannot hit your target reliably until you develop good trigger control—and good trigger control starts with simple awareness.

You must do these exercises very, very slowly. Maybe even slower than that. Yes, I know you need to shoot fast to save your life. And I’m not going to insult you by chanting overused slogans at you, but I will point out that the best – indeed, the only – way to be sure we are doing things correctly when we’re moving fast is to start by learning how to do them slowly.

Put another way, when you teach a teenager how to drive, you don’t start out on the interstate highway. You start at a snail’s pace within a controlled environment such as an empty parking lot. (And also, you use the invisible brake under your foot on the passenger’s side of the car … a lot … but that’s another story.)

For those who are already experienced shooters, the slowness of these exercises may feel a little strange. Again, the purpose is to slow you down enough to help you become completely aware of sensations you don’t usually register. As an experienced shooter, you may find it harder to do these activities correctly than a new shooter might. You already have an ingrained habit for how you manipulate the trigger, and it’s probably much faster than any of the exercises require. That’s good, but you still need to slow waaaay down for these things. When you go slowly, you will receive full value from the diagnostics and experience the accuracy benefits of later drills.

Exercise #1: Feel the Trigger

Start with an empty firearm. Practice this skill only inside your safe dry fire routine. Check the gun properly (by sight and feel) to be sure it is really empty, then choose a safe direction – one that includes a backstop that would definitely stop a bullet.

Point the empty firearm at your chosen aimpoint, then close your eyes so you can focus on what your finger feels.

Press the trigger as slowly as you can.

Your goal is to produce at least 30 seconds of continuous, slowly increasing pressure before you feel the trigger reach its break point. When you reach the break point, you will feel the trigger “click” to indicate that if the gun were loaded, it would have fired. How slowly can you make that happen?

Take your finger off the trigger and put it along the frame. Reset the action (rack the slide). Now repeat the same agonizingly slow trigger press. Remember, taking 30 seconds or more is the goal for now. Slowly increase the pressure on the trigger until it reaches the break point and clicks to indicate the shot would have fired.

Put your finger on the frame and reset the gun to do it again. This time, while you very slowly increase your pressure on the trigger, think about the sensations you feel under your trigger finger. Is the trigger stiff and hard to move (“heavy”) or is it easy to move (“light”)? How far will your finger travel before the trigger reaches the break point? Before it reaches the break point, will your finger move the trigger just a little to the rear (“short”) or will it need to move a long way (“long”)? When the trigger does reach the break point, can you feel any other things happening mechanically inside the gun?

Reset and repeat. This time, pay attention to any changes you feel as the trigger moves. Does the trigger seem light at first, and then get heavier as it reaches the break point (“stacking”)? Can you feel any other changes in the trigger weight? Do you feel any bumping or grinding sensations (“grittiness”) or is the trigger movement smooth?

If you have a double-action firearm with an external hammer, try watching the motion of the hammer a few times while you do this exercise. Can you make the hammer move at the same speed all the way back, with absolutely no change in momentum?

If you have a double-action/single-action gun, repeat the above exercise with each type of trigger press. How are they the same? How are they different? When it’s set up to fire in single action, can you press the trigger as slowly and as smoothly as you press it in double action?

Watch this blog for the next exercise in the series.

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Start smart
October 25, 2013

Yesterday I wrote this: “All of that constant, unavoidable body motion means we can’t just line the sights up once with a  glance and then let fly with the trigger, KA-BLOWEE! If we do that, our shots hit unpredictably, sometimes in the right place and sometimes … somewhere else.”

Today I should probably erase that paragraph, take it back, and pretend I never said it, because you and I have both seen many excellent shooters who appear do just that – glance at the sights and let fly. They certainly seem to hit their targets, too! But even in the face of this evidence, I still don’t take back what I said there. Because it is true. It’s just not the whole story.

Those superfast action pistol competitors reach high but accurate shooting speeds by mastering sight alignment, the art of trigger control, and especially the art of follow-through. With a lot of hard work and smart practice, they first learn how to see what they need to see and how to manipulate the trigger properly when they see it. They build up thousands of repetitions of doing the right thing. They naturally pick up their speed as their practiced technique becomes built into their synapses, until they can finally push the speed limits of these ingrained good habits until they’re flying down the road without any apparent effort. In other words, they don’t start fast. They start slow.

Since it’s tacky to always quote your own writing (hey, don’t shame me), here’s another firearms trainer on the same subject. Well-known for several gunfights he was involved with during his years on the LAPD, Scott Reitz has trained hundreds if not thousands of officers over the years. Although it is a little dated these days, his book The Art of Modern Gunfighting (Pistol) should be found on every well-stocked defensive handgunner’s bookshelf. Reitz writes: “It is very difficult to fine tune a trigger press if all one does is to press the trigger rapidly. You can never learn the nuances and idiosyncracies of a particular trigger at great speed. This knowledge will only come at a slower speed and then will be built upon from that point.”

So let’s discuss what you can do, slowly, to improve your ability to shoot fast and accurately. Over the few weeks, I will be introducing a series of simple exercises you can do to improve your awareness of how you’re using the trigger and how well you can control its motion.

To prepare for this series, I recommend reading (or re-reading) the following articles.

Watch this space tomorrow for the first recommended exercise.

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Watch it!
October 24, 2013

“Watch your front sight.”

If I had a dime for every time I’ve said that line or heard it said, I’d probably be able to buy a Starbucks Coffee. I don’t mean a cup of joe, not even a Grandad or Venetian or Giganta or whatever they call the one that holds so much caffeine you shake for two days after you drink it. I mean the entire franchise operation, lock, stock, and barrel full of Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration there. But only a slight one. After all, I’ve been taking classes or teaching them for more than 14 years now. On most ranges, “Watch the front sight!” gets said nearly as often as, “Shooter ready?” That’s a lot of Starbucks under the bridge.

Still, for all the times I’ve heard a range officer tell someone to watch their front sight, I have rarely heard anyone explain why we’re keeping an eye that sight, or what’s supposed to happen when we do. Are we afraid that itsy-bitsy gizmo is going to pack up and move to Tahiti, and leave us at home? Will it suddenly start dancing the macarena while wearing a tiny little rhinestone necklace? Or what? What are we watching it for, anyway?

Here’s the skinny.

Starting with the basics, the front sight is the bump on the muzzle end of the barrel. The front sight usually (not always) has a splash or dot of paint on it to make it easier to see. Sometimes the whole thing is made of something bright, like a tritium tube, designed to force your eye to pay attention to it.

Watch this space.

Watch this space.

The rear sight is the bump at the end of the gun closest the shooter.  The rear sight is usually (not always) notched, split, or otherwise bifurcated in some way. On most handguns, you’re supposed to visually place your front sight into that rear sight notch. Make sure it’s in the center of the notch by seeing equal amounts of light on either side of the front sight, then line up the whole shebang with the exact center of the spot you want to hit.

equal-light

There should be an equal amount of light on both sides of the front sight when it’s centered in the rear sight notch.

even-across

The top of the front sight should (in most cases!) line up evenly with the top of the rear sight.

In other words, the purpose of the sights is to help you hold the muzzle of your gun in a straight line with the target, like so:

Line it up.

Picture definitely not to scale.

Now here’s where the rubber meets the road. Or at least, where the optic nerve hits reality. Because we can’t just line the sights up once and for all and then let our concentration drift away to think about other things while we shoot. Nope! Instead, we have to continuously keep realigning the sights while we press the trigger. It’s an active process, not a passive one. And it keeps happening during the entire time we’re shooting. We can’t just do it once for all time. Or even once every two seconds.

Why not?

Well, because you’re not a robot. You’re a living, breathing, moving human being. No matter how carefully you try to stay still, your sights will always be in constant motion whenever you aim a hand-held firearm. Every tiny little movement you make will be transferred to your handgun. Even when you try to hold the gun perfectly still, you’ll still move a little bit. Your muscles will tremble just a little as they lift the weight of the gun. Your nerves will constantly signal your muscles to make tiny little adjustments in hand or finger pressure. Your balance will shift a little. Your breath will go in and out, blood go round and round – and movement of your body translates into movement of the gun. Every time your body moves even a tiny amount, your sights will move relative to the target, and the front and rear sight will also move relative to each other. You are a perpetual motion machine (though, sadly, not the type that’s worth a squintillion dollars to discover).

All of that constant, unavoidable body motion means we can’t just line the sights up once with a  glance and then let fly with the trigger, KA-BLOWEE! If we do that, our shots hit unpredictably, sometimes in the right place and sometimes … somewhere else.

Nor can we just yank the trigger back, superfast, just exactly at the very instant we think the sights are finally, truly, really aligned. We can’t do that because a sudden jerk of the trigger almost always throws the shots off target (usually low and to the left for a right handed shooter, though there are other patterns). It doesn’t work because no one actually moves faster than their own optic nerve. What you saw .003 seconds ago isn’t the world as it actually is right now, nor can you somehow get your muscles moving quickly enough to time travel and bridge that gap.

So if sudden explosive trigger-slapping isn’t the answer, what is? Smooth, even pressure on the trigger, and continuous realigment of the sights.

To hit the target accurately and reliably, you must keep realigning the sights during the entire shooting process – from the time your finger touches the trigger, while you press the trigger smoothly, while you bring the trigger back evenly to its break point. Even while recoil happens, you hold the trigger to the rear as you realign the sights. Keep realigning your sights continuously until you decide to quit shooting, then lift your finger and place it alongside the frame before you bring the gun off target.

In other words, as long as your finger is touching the trigger, you must constantly check and recheck the sights, adjust and readjust the aiming details, so you can keep the muzzle lined up with where you want to hit. As long as you keep lining the sights up while you press the trigger, the bullet will hit the center of your target no matter when it leaves the barrel.

That’s why “watch the front sight!” is such common, and such uncommonly good, advice.

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Online “training” class
October 23, 2013

From my email box: “Kathy, what do you think about online concealed carry training classes? Are they a good idea?”

My response:  When I was a little girl riding in the back of my grandpa’s car, sometimes somebody would cut him off in traffic. Grandpa would sigh and mumble, “Where’d that guy learn to drive, correspondence school??”

Somehow, I always remember that line whenever the subject of online training comes up. And I say this as someone who is heavily invested in helping others learn as much as they can via the web. It’s not as though I’m against the idea of learning stuff online! I’m all for it. Only I also believe that we have to understand and respect the web’s limitations.

Because you have seen my website, you know I spend a lot of my days educating people on the internet. Why do I do that? I do it because I think good  information — about handguns, about concealed carry, about self defense — is critically important for someone who intends to save her life with a gun.

Websites like this one can provide important information, but at the end of the day, it’s only information. As important as good information is, defensive handgun use is just like any other physical skill in one important way: memorizing information about the skill is definitely not the core of the learning process. The core of the process is physical learning, teaching your body how to actually do the skill. Physical learning best takes place in the real world, on the range, in person, under the watchful eye of a qualified other.

You can no more learn how to defend yourself with a gun from a website than you can learn how to waterski or play baseball that way. At best, on a well-designed site, you can learn the rules of the game and perhaps pick up a few tips to help you refine skills you’ve already learned in real life. (To be clear, let me repeat myself: those are all good things! That’s why I have spent so much time building this website. Online learning is good and necessary. It just isn’t all there is to the process.)

At the end of the day, online concealed carry “training” classes fill exactly the same niche as reading the booklet and taking a written test prior to getting your driver’s license. Passing the written test might prove that you know the rules of the road, but no way in the world will it teach you how to drive.

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A love song for my students
October 20, 2013

This morning I woke up with a smile on my face, thinking about some of the awesome people I worked with this year. (If you recognize yourself in any of the following descriptions – Hi! Thanks for letting me be a part of your self defense journey.)

  • A young mom with a houseful of little ones, who had a hard time getting away for the weekend. She felt slightly guilty for spending her weekend on the range, and for leaving her husband in charge of the toddler herd. But she also knew she was doing the right thing, because she wanted to be prepared to protect her children if danger ever threatened. Sometimes it’s hard for people to make the “selfish” decision to invest in learning a skill they hope they’ll never need, even though having the skill means they will more likely be able to save the lives of people they love. I love that she made such a big investment in learning how to protect herself and her family.
  • An older gentleman, a very smart man at the top of his professsional field, learning something new for the first time. He moved slowly, deliberately, carefully. You know that old adage about “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”? It’s not true. Sometimes older people feel like they’re “stupid” for not absorbing things as fast as they did when they were younger, but that’s not what’s going on. Your brain becomes optimized for different things as you age. Younger people absorb information much more quickly than older ones do, but older people find it easier to make logical connections and are better at solving complex problems. That means older students often need more time to learn new things than younger ones do, while younger ones often need more thorough explanations to help them make connections between teaching points. Working with this man was a joy and privilege, because he was so determined to learn and so determined to get it right. I loved his intent commitment to tackling something new.
  • A woman struggling with the aftermath of a scary criminal event. I know she didn’t feel brave, but that’s exactly what she was. Like other crime survivors, this woman may have felt fearful, overwhelmed, or frightened – but courage isn’t the same thing as feeling no fear. Courage is deciding that something else is more important than fear. It’s feeling afraid, but going forward anyway. Instead of curling up in the corner and licking her emotional and physical wounds, this woman made the courageous decision to heal and to learn how to protect herself from similar events in the future. I loved her bravery.
  • An older woman with a gimpy ankle. I think she may have been worried when she first arrived – as so many students are, wondering if they belong in the class, if they’ll be able to keep up, if they’ll be safe, if they’ve made a big mistake even thinking about doing this stuff, if the physical demands will be too much for them, if this and if that and on and on. Because of her long term injury, she may have been more worried than most. But I never heard her complain, not even once. She cheerfully tried every activity, and graciously allowed me to hand her a chair to sit down when she needed it. Whenever someone approaching or inside the retirement years comes to class (which is often), I am always impressed and inspired, and even moreso when it’s someone with a physical challenge. I loved her upbeat attitude and cheerful commitment to learning.
  • A popular online personality who had little experience shooting handguns even though he loves his rifles and shotguns. Once you’ve become known for something, it becomes very, very hard to set aside your ego – embarrassment, really – and let people know you don’t already know everything about that field. You have to respect that kind of courage! I loved his open mind and how eagerly he dived in to learn more.
  • A woman with a hearing challenge, who contacted me for a private lesson. She was smart, safe, enthusiastic – and very determined to learn what she needed to learn even though she couldn’t tackle a group class. I loved her creative determination to find a way to learn what she wanted to learn.
  • A woman who took my class twice – once to watch, once to shoot. She needed to sit out the shooting portion first time around because of some medical issues, but gave her full attention to the class anyway, going through the motions with a dummy gun whenever possible. I loved her flexible approach to learning, absorbing what she could when she could.

Truthfully, every student I’ve taught has also taught me something, and blessed me by being there. In some ways, every person who comes to class has a story, and some of those stories are heartbreakers. But far more of them are stories of triumph and even joy. I can’t begin to express how privileged I feel when someone decides to face their fears, overcome the challenges and practical obstacles, and let me be part of their self defense learning.

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Less Than Perfect
October 11, 2013

Happy Friday!

Yesterday I posted a new article. The article, “Less Than Perfect,” talks about two different mindsets people bring to their lives, and about how these mindsets have a strong effect on our ability to defend ourselves. It’s long, but I worked hard on it and I think you’ll find it useful on your own journey.

Below, you’ll find a short summary of the two mindsets — but you’ll have to read the rest of the article to find out what they have to do with self defense.

The first way of thinking, which Dweck calls a fixed mindset, emphasizes native talent, inborn abilities, and non-changeable labels like “smart” or “talented.” Inside a fixed mindset, every test you take is a measure of your inborn traits (Are you really smart?). Within this way of thinking, every job you find easy validates your worth as a person, but every task you find challenging creates a negative judgment of your value. From a fixed mindset perspective, it’s better to feel talented than it is to risk failure. Fixed mindset people find it very comforting to think, “I’m smart, so I could have ____ if I’d tried.”

The other way of thinking, which Dweck calls a growth mindset, says that people can change and develop, and that your inborn traits are not as important as what you do with them. This mindset values the process of learning, embracing mistakes as the way to learn how to do better. Within a growth mindset, every test, every challenge, every measure of your skill helps you find ways to improve your performance. An error is never a condemnation of your personal worth. When you find a task hard to do, it does not mean that you are “bad” – or even that you are “bad at” that thing. It simply means you have room to get better. Mistakes and difficult tasks provide joyful opportunities to learn and grow. From a growth mindset perspective, the saddest words in the world are, “Well, I could have ____ if I’d tried.”

Thinking about the book as I did my errands in town one day, I walked into the pharmacy and heard … [Read More]

Enjoy the article … and have a great weekend.

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