Well, today was the first time I've fired a gun since childhood – and it was a blast! (no pun intended)
We shot a Glock 19 and a Sig something or other – it had a slightly bigger grip, and the barrel was a tad longer than the Glock. We went through three boxes of ammo – I wouldn't have minded another box.
Things I learned:
– The Glock is nice. Easy, and it felt comfortable in my hand. The Sig was alright, but the brass headed toward me when I was shooting a lot more than the Glock. It also seemed to kick more? Or maybe just in a different way than the Glock did.
– Speed loaders are not silly, nor are they a luxury. They are necessary and will make range time much more fun.
– Squinching one eye shut is ok, everybody does it. I was instinctively doing that, and was worrying that I might be giving myself bad habits.
– It will be extremely easy to run through ammo.
My knowledge of guns is spotty, which I should rectify. I want the first gun we buy to be right for us, then we can move on to other stuff. I'm 85% sure that a 9mm autoloader is what we want to start out with. This store had Glock 19's for $532 – no idea yet if that's reasonable or not.
Oooh, that was fun. Must go again soon!
The bottom three are mine, and the one in the top right is
That’s an ok on a G19, especially if it comes with night sights. A good gun, especially now that you can get it with 15 round magazines.
That target on the far left looks pretty good. Looks like you’ve got a little bit of a flinch, or not even quite a flinch. You’re just trying to make the gun go, to get the shot over with, and the extra jerk on the trigger is enough to make your shot drop. Let the gun go off on its own, and focus on the front sight, and they’ll all be in the 10 ring.
The other two look like you just weren’t focusing on the front sight. Remember, it’s “front sight, press”. Do those two things simultaneously and the shot will go where you want it. That’s pretty much all there is to shooting a handgun at reasonable ranges. It’s not even really a skill. Just a trick, like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. Add follow through to that (keep the trigger held back until you get the front sight back on the target) and you’ll be able to shoot both fast and accurately.
Cool, thanks for the tips! Of course, it’s just more practice, which I won’t mind a bit.
Next time I’m going to mark the targets so we know for sure whose is whose.
Competitive? Me?? Nah. But I intend to obliterate that pretty little black spot in the middle. :)
The guy said that all of our targets would’ve passed the CHL test. That’s a bit disconcerting – I want much better accuracy before I go for my CHL.
I do not know how much merit there is in this, but I have heard that when you close one eye, it “flattens” your view of what’s in front of you, warping the depth perception so that everything is like a photo. In some people’s cases, that actually HELPS them to depict everything on a flat plane, and thus hit what they’re aiming at a little better. Art students have told me they sometimes do this in order to more accurately paint a scene, since a painting is a flat plane.