Author: Sandy Keathley

There’s good news, and bad news.

The good news is that, yes, you can use a .22 for the Proficiency.  When this article was originally written, that was not true, but now it is.

The bad news, however, has to do with whether or not you should take advantage of that. Some people, including some I respect, think this would be a good change. I disagree, but not for the expected reason. I have gone on record before, suggesting that the .22 should not be so easily dismissed as a defensive weapon, especially if it has a long barrel and a high-capacity magazine. Even the tiny Baretta Bobcat, with its 6-round magazine is better than nothing, but not much better. A target pistol, like the Ruger Mark IV, would allow you to put 10 rounds in a home invader in a matter of seconds, which would likely make him rethink his career choices. However, unless you took a head shot, that would slow him down, but might not stop him immediately. Keep in mind that that home invader, upon seeing the pistol, could get to you from across a large room in under 2 seconds (the well-documented Tueller Paradigm). If he has a knife, putting him in the hospital won’t save your life. The .22 only works if the invader doesn’t rush you.

However, I digress. My objection is not so much in using a .22, but in leading a person to think they know how to handle a firearm. There is a world of difference between the .22 and calibers like 9mm, 10mm, .40, .45, .38 Special, or the legendary .357 Magnum. Learning to shoot only a .22 is like riding a tricycle and thinking you can also ride a Harley. True, the .22 has killed many people. It is often the choice of hit men, but they surprise their victims, take head shots, or both, and the noise factor is important.

I often let beginners fire a few rounds from a .22 first, so they can get a sense of it, before we move on to something larger. The skills learned in handling a larger caliber gun will easily translate back to a smaller one, but the reverse is not necessarily true.

Whatever the point might be in allowing the .22 for the LTC Proficiency, it can’t be making it easier to get the license. It is already easy enough for someone with a week’s experience. The result would be people scoring 245 instead of 210 (175 is passing), and thinking they are now armed.

Col. Jeff Cooper once said, “Owning a handgun doesn’t make you armed any more than owning a guitar makes you a musician.”

This is a very common question.  The process in Texas is not difficult, but it is a little confusing, without a roadmap, so here goes.  These steps need not be done in this order, but you will save some time if you do.

1. First, understand that you have to already know how to safely handle, load, and shoot a pistol, at least to a minimum level.  The standard is not high, but you can’t know nothing.  You will not learn anything about shooting in this process; you will just demonstrate what you do know.
2. If you don’t know how to shoot, or don’t feel confidant, take some instruction first. It doesn’t require a lot.  I often take someone from beginner to CHL-level in one session.
3. Determine your eligibility.  Here is a reasonably detailed summary of the requirements. Most people will be able to tell from this if they meet the standard; if you are unclear, contact the DPS for clarification.  Check here for other information.
4. Start your application at the DPS website.  It may be counter-intuitive to do the application before you have all the requirements, but that’s how it works. Do this on a computer with a printer attached.  You will need to print out a checklist and a bar code. You will pay your state fees at this time, and set an appointment for fingerprinting. Don’t stop before doing all these things.
5. Do the fingerprinting as above.  There are a number of places to do that, and it’s quick and easy.  The important point is that this needs to be tied to your application, so they need to be part of the same process, and in that order.
6. Sign up for and attend a CHL class.  These are sometimes held at gun ranges, but also at office suites or meeting rooms.  They are always taught by DPS-Certified CHL Instructors, who are also Firearms Instructors.  Every part of that class (curriculum, written test, shooting test) is mandated by the state of Texas, so the only difference between different classes is the style of presentation and experience of the instructor. The classes are about 4 hours long, plus the shooting part. That is often done the same day, unless the class is at a commercial gun range. For logistical reasons, they usually have to schedule the shooting on another day.
7.  Upon successful completion of the class, and passing both the written and shooting proficiency tests, you will be given a form (CHL-100).  Put that form, your printed bar code from step 4, and any other documents listed on your checklist into an envelope and mail them to Austin (keep copies of everything).  Items you might have to send could include a copy of your DD-214 (if claiming veteran status), or proof of legal residency.
8. Wait.  The typical time is 3-6 weeks, but I have seen it be as little as 12 business days.

Recently, I was working with a student to fine-tune his shooting.  We adjusted his grip, talked about the right part of the finger to put on the trigger, talked about treating the trigger as a “dimmer” and not a “light switch”, and slowed down the trigger squeeze, but he kept shooting quite low.  The groups were very good, but consistently low.  I thought at first he was just anticipating recoil, and pushing on the gun, until I saw a vibration of the muzzle right before the trigger break.  I dry-fired his gun to prove it would not be there, then had him do it.  I saw the same vibration.  More importantly, he also saw it.

Both the problem and the solution were simple.  His gun had a fair amount of take-up (slack, or pre-travel) in the trigger.  While I instinctively took up that slack before squeezing, he did not.  He was squeezing from the very beginning of trigger movement, and when he hit the sear, it was like hitting a curb on a bicycle.  That bump was causing the vibration, which manifested as pitching forward.

It should be noted that some triggers have little or no take-up, and some ramp up smoothly from the beginning of movement to the break, without that bump.  It depends on the design of the gun, and to a certain degree, its cost.

Once he understood the need to pull up to that “curb” before squeezing, his groups moved up where they should be.  Once again, dry-firing pointed the way to the solution.  Navy SEALs do an extended dry-fire routine before every training session.  Do you?

OK, not every handgun has a safety.  Glock is famous for that, as are a few others, but most guns do have one.  If yours does, do you know for sure that it works?  Test it unloaded (and of course, always point the muzzle in a safe direction), but also test it loaded, while at the range. 

1911s typically have a grip safety, while most other guns have a thumb safety.

Safeties are not especially prone to failure, but they are mechanical, and anything mechanical can fail.  Whatever causes one to fail could be happening intermittently, so it won’t fail every time, which is why you never point the gun at a person or a dog (OK, or a cat) and depend on the safety.

This came to mind as a topic when I bought another gun, a Walther, which has a very unusual safety.  Instead of locking the trigger so it can’t move, this safety moves a steel plate between the hammer and the firing pin.  The trigger pull stays the same, and the hammer still falls.

That’s actually a little disconcerting.  With the safety on, there is no way to know if it will fire until it does fire, which is too late.  Hmmm.  Is that steel plate actually there?  What if a trainee assembled the gun and left it out.  Dry-firing doesn’t prove anything here.  This has to be tested live.

Once again, never trust a safety, and test it periodically!

I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating, as many shooters either don’t know about this, or get distracted and forget about it.

Semi-automatics are finely balanced devices:

• they fire a cartridge that generates a known force (within certain parameters)
• that force pushes against a slide that is lapped to a frame to a known coefficient of friction
• the slide is pushed back in the opposite direction by a spring of a known strength

Obviously, a $1000 handgun is more finely balanced in these respects than a $200 one, but sometimes that just means that the cheaper one needs more breaking in.  The physics is the same.

The unspoken part of this equation is that the balance of these forces depends on the recoil of the cartridge firing.  If that force is mitigated, everything else breaks down. Imagine firing a .380 cartridge in a 9mm pistol (don’t do this, BTW).  The force would not be enough to push the slide hard enough against the return spring to properly cycle the action, and you get a misfeed.  Depending on the nature of the misfeed (double-feed or stove-pipe), it may take more than racking the slide to clear the jam, which is a big issue in defensive shooting.

One factor that often contributes to this problem is lubrication.  If the gun is not well lubricated, or you are shooting in cold weather, or both, you may get jams. 

Another factor, less often considered, is “limp-wristing“. If you don’t grip the pistol hard enough to keep its orientation reasonably rigid, the flexing of your wrist will absorb some of the recoil, and cause jams.  The caliber of the gun also figures into this, as larger calibers have more recoil, and can be harder to control.  One of the basic rules of shooting a handgun is, only shoot a gun you can control.  That should probably read, “only shoot a handgun you are strong enough to control“.  You don’t have to be Rambo, but imagine a person who is 5′ 4”, not very athletic, with small hands and wrists, shooting a .45 or a .357 Sig.  That person is probably more likely to have problems with jamming.

What to do? Start with a caliber that is easier to control (9mm is a good choice), and that has a grip that matches the size of your hands.  Grip the gun firmly with the strong hand (not white-knuckle, but close), and a little more firmly with the weak hand.  Massad Ayoob calls it a “crush grip“.  Even as you get more used to shooting, don’t let yourself get too casual about your grip.  Treat it like it will fly out of your hands, and you can minimize those annoying jams.

Sandy Keathley
McKinney Firearms Training

As a CHL instructor, I see a wide variety of shooters come through my classes, ranging from police officers and other experienced shooters, to people who just bought a gun 3 days before. As is to be expected, the more experienced shooters tend to score at the high end of the scale, and the others at the lower end, although both types will sometimes surprise me. While fundamentals like stance and grip play a role in the success of these shooters, probably nothing has as big an impact as trigger discipline.

So what is that? It means mastering two aspects of the trigger pull:

1. Pulling the trigger straight back, so that any lateral forces (left and right) are balanced. If you have too much finger on the trigger (up to the joint), you will have a tendency to pull the muzzle right (for a right-handed shooter) as you squeeze the trigger. If too little finger, you will push the muzzle to the left. The movement may be very small, but that’s all it takes. With practice, you can find the “sweet spot” on your finger. It will vary from one gun to another, because of the dimensions of the gun.
2. Focusing more on the action at hand than on the result. Anticipation of the shot will ruin the shot, so you must relax, clear your head, and pull back until the trigger touches the frame. Yes, the shot will break before then; pull through it,like a baseball batter swings through the ball.

You must not think of the trigger as being like a light switch, off and on. Think of it like opening a large, heavy door. Take at least 1 1/2 seconds, from the start of pressure on the trigger, to the end, or at least the minimal time required to press the trigger back without disturbing the muzzle. Even in a crisis situation, you would have 2 seconds per shot. As you get better, that time will decrease. During that interval, think only about a smooth, steady pull, and keeping the sights aligned, not where you want the bullet to hit. Better yet, think of nothing; empty your mind and get in the zone. Think the words “wait, wait, wait” until the shot breaks.

Accurate shooting should be a relaxing action, not a stressful one. The more agitated you are, the worse the shot will be. If you are stressed out at the range, what will happen in a real self-defense situation?

Relax, breathe, meditate, be surprised when the shot breaks.

Sandy Keathley
McKinneyCHL.net

Fire 10 rounds at any type of target at 10 yards or less. Can you easily count all the holes? If you can, you may be focusing on the wrong thing. Your goal should not be to just hit the target, but to hit the previous hole. Well, if it was a good shot. For marksmanship training, groups are important. Every shot that misses the Point-of-Aim (center of the target) traveled at an angle to an imaginary straight line. The further out it goes, the larger that angle, and the further off the mark.  That’s why people trying to improve shoot at bullseye targets instead of zombie outlines, and try to get small groups. If you put as many as 10 shots on a target, and have not shot out a ragged hole, you will be able to count all the holes. That’s not a good thing.

As a Concealed Handgun instructor, I can look at a row of targets from 5 yards out and tell who has passed easily, and those who scored on the low end. I score every target manually, but I am seldom surprised. When there is a ragged hole in the middle, they will have scored 220+. If I can see all the holes, like a shotgun pattern, they will be below 220, and sometimes below 190.

That is still passing, but there is still a potential problem. It is estimated that a defensive shooter, even with training, will only perform at 50% of their ability in a crisis. Considering that many typical carry guns only hold 6 rounds, this person may well miss 3 shots entirely, and only wound with the other 3, whereas even an 8 inch, 3 shot group would likely kill or incapacitate the attacker.

That is why one needs to be an over-achiever with a handgun. Don’t just hit the target; put all the bullets in a tight group.

A 36-year-old man was shot and killed Tuesday night while he was attempting to rob an elderly couple outside a Northwest Dallas grocery store, police say. The man, identified by police as 36-year-old Mike Angel Carmillio, approached a man and a woman as they walked out of a grocery store and snatched a gold necklace from the woman’s neck, police said. The incident occurred around 7:15 p.m. at the Aldi in the 3000 block of Forest Lane near Webb Chapel Road.

The man knocked the woman to the ground and tried to rob her. The woman’s husband, 71-year-old Ronnie Lummus, pulled out a handgun and fired several shots at the man as he was attempting to flee in his car. The man got in his car but died before fleeing, police said.

Detectives interviewed Lummus, his wife and witnesses. Lummus has a valid concealed handgun license. He told officers that he was afraid the man would harm him or his wife during the robbery, police said.

Lummus has not been charged with a crime. The case will be referred to a grand jury.

by Sandy Keathley
McKinneyFirearmsTraining.com

To start with, revolvers don’t jam, barring a rare defect in the shell casing size, so let’s move on to semi-automatic pistols. While the semi (or autoloader) is a very reliable device, it is complicated, and depends on several actions working together in harmony. When that harmony is disturbed, the action is subject to several types of intermittent malfunctions, described variously as Failure-to-Eject (FTE), Failure-to-Feed (FTF), stovepipe (see FTE), or just “jam”. These might happen once in 100 rounds, once in 50 rounds, or once or more in every magazine. Failure-to-Eject (which may or may not be a mechanical problem) is often confused with Failure-to-Extract (which usually is). If malfunctions occur more often than once in 10 rounds, suspect something mechanical.

Possible mechanical problems

The extractor hook could be bent or damaged. In that case, you will have major feeding problems. This will require the services of a gunsmith.

It is possible for the forward lips of the magazine to be bent, causing each round to be pointed too low to properly engage the feed ramp. Just look in the ejector port after inserting a loaded magazine. The top round should be pointed slightly upward. You can usually fix that with needle-nose pliers, but a good quality handgun should not have that problem.

If the slide return spring has been replaced with the wrong strength, or has weakened over time, that can throw off the balance of the action. Unless you had previously replaced that spring, there would be no way for you to know if that is a problem, so see a gunsmith.

Barring such mechanical problems, the usual culprits are usually proper fit of the components (cheaper guns), or maintenance (any guns). To understand that, you need to understand what happens
in the cycling process:

1. The cartridge “explodes” (burns), producing a somewhat predictable force to the rear (not all loads are the same; hotter loads produce more force, but not as much as the next higher caliber). 
2. The force drives the slide to the rear, impeded only by friction in the rails (grooves), and by a gradually-increasing forward force from the return spring. During this time, the extractor pulls the empty casing from the chamber, ejects it, and clears the magazine, allowing the next round to pop up into place. If the casing sticks a little in the chamber, that also exerts forward force against the slide movement.
3. The slide continues to the rear until its dissipating force is balanced by the sum of friction in the rails, friction from extracting the casing, and the forward force of the return spring, or it hits the frame (not normal).
4. As the return spring reasserts itself, the slide is pushed forward again, picks up another round, pushes it to the feed ramp, and up into the chamber. The slide continues “into battery”, sealing the chamber for the next “explosion”.

That is how it should work. That calibration is easily thrown out of balance by increased friction in several places:

• Extracting the empty casing. 
• The slide rails
• Pushing the round up the feed ramp.

Performing proper maintenance can mitigate many of these issues:

• Some cartridges are coated with lacquer, which, when heated, can leave behind a sticky residue. Using an over-sized brass bore brush chucked into a variable speed drill, polish the chamber with J-B Non-embedding bore cleaner (blue label). Clean the chamber thoroughly with patches and mineral spirits, then with patches and solvent. A shotgun mop attachment is useful.
• Always clean the rails/grooves with solvent, and lubricate with gun oil (not WD-40).
• Clean the feed ramp with solvent. If the ramp is not slick, consider polishing it. A small buffing wheel on a Dremel tool is perfect for that. Use a buffing compound made for steel, like White Rouge.

The modern semi-automatic is a complex and sophisticated piece of machinery, but given enough time, it will start to fail intermittently, with results that can be either annoying or fatal. Take care of it, and it will give reliable service for years.

Practicing marksmanship is like exercising; you know you should, but you’re always just so busy. However, it’s more fun than exercising! Regardless, getting into a routine makes it easier to accomplish something.

Start by finding a range that is reasonably on your way home from work, and buy a membership. Yes, I know it costs a few hundred dollars. What’s your life worth? I guarantee, when you realize you can go to the range for free, you won’t hesitate to go. Gyms sell memberships knowing that a certain percentage of members will stop going after a few weeks. That way, they can oversell the club, and make money. Like a gym, if a range member goes frequently, the cost per trip is much less than ala carte. My range loses money on me. Don’t tell them!

Try going to the range every Friday after work, just for 20 minutes. When you’re not paying for each session, it doesn’t matter how long you’re there. That alone will improve your shooting remarkably, as that represents 45-48 sessions a year instead of once every 3 months like some people. If you have more than one gun, alternate them, or take two. You do have more than one, don’t you?

Don’t forget dry-firing. If that can be part of a Seal Team’s routine, it can be part of yours. Most center-fire guns will not be harmed by dry-firing, but I always use snapcaps, just in case. Do two minutes of dry-firing before you start shooting, and maintain your stance and arm-extension throughout. This is a good way to improve your ability to focus your mental efforts on the muzzle, and keep it from moving. You can also do that at home. I have targets up at various places around the house, so I can practice varying distances. Guests find that odd, but what do I care? (Maybe that’s why nobody visits!).

Once you start shooting for real, think about the fundamentals. Foot position. Stance. Are you bending slightly at the waist? Leaning forward? Good arm extension? Those all contribute to focus, both physical and mental, and help you be serious about marksmanship.

Defensive shooting is typically thought of as two-handed, but once in a while, try shooting one-handed, both strong hand and support hand. This is harder than it looks, because most people find it difficult to move one finger (index) without affecting the rest of the hand, which causes the muzzle to move. Musicians learn this early on, as playing an instrument requires learning how to move one finger out of 4-9 without affecting the others, but most people never have to do this. It takes a little practice. Again, dry-fire practice on this is more economical, until you have a grip on it (so to speak).  Is it possible you could be in a shooting incident, and be wounded in the arm of the strong hand? Yes.

Panic drill. If you can arrange to do this where you can draw from a holster, fine, but be careful. Most people who injured themselves with a gun do so while drawing from a holster, or re-holstering. Never use both hands to draw from a holster. Most commercial gun ranges don’t allow holsters, so in that case, just lay the gun on the bench, muzzle pointed downrange, in the condition in which you would carry it. That could be, no round in the chamber, safety on, decocked, or cocked and locked. Have a man-sized target in front of you, about 5 yards out. On a Go command, see how fast you can put two shots on the target. The goal is 3 seconds. Ten seconds and you’re dead. This also takes practice.

After all, if you’re going to spend money on a gun, you may as well be good at using it, just in case.