Firearms Training Blog

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.

by Sandy Keathley

McKinneyCHL.net

Many military surplus rifles from before 1960, especially WWII bolt-action rifles (Mosin-Nagant, Mauser and others) were re-arsenaled in the 1970s and put away for future wars or emergencies. As a rust preventative, they were often disassembled, the parts covered in a heavy grease called Cosmoline, then reassembled and stored for decades. After the mid-1990s, with the knowledge that those rifles were now effectively obsolete, the respective governments started selling them off to exporters who sold them to American companies for resale to collectors.

Even today, years later, these are still showing up, and new collectors are sometimes unclear on how best to clean them up to put them in shooting condition. When the stocks were either varnished or laminated, the grease is easy to remove, but if not, it soaked into the wood and made the wood tacky. While cleaning up such a rifle is tedious, it is not difficult, and treasure is sometimes found underneath!

This description of the process is based around the typical Mosin-Nagant 91/30, but should be applicable to any milsurp rifle that has been packed in grease. Start by separating the action from the stock.

Disassemble the action, removing the bolt and trigger. Disassemble both the bolt and the trigger group completely. Make notes if necessary, so you can reassemble them properly, but there are many videos online for reference. Wipe off all excess grease from the metal parts with paper towels, put them in a pan, cover them with mineral spirits, and allow to sit overnight. After the parts have soaked sufficiently, remove them, wash with soap and water, rinse, dry, then use compressed air to dry more.

At this point, many collectors will use a buffing wheel to carefully deburr any sharp edges, especially on the bolt parts, but that is optional. I also cut 4 loops off of the firing pin spring, and grind the end flat, to make cocking easier. Ammo in the 1940s required a stronger strike than modern ammo, so this won’t affect anything.

If there is any appreciable time between the final rinse and reassembly of the bolt, give the parts a light coating of Rem oil, as these parts will rust quickly. If not, reassemble the bolt. Some people coat all parts with gun oil, but I have had good results with high-temperature Silicone wheel bearing grease. A little trigger oil or grease at the trigger-to-sear interface is also a good idea. Put those parts aside.

Put the receiver end of the barrel into a bucket of mineral spirits and allow to stand for awhile, then pour some down the barrel. Dry as much as possible, then dry with compressed air. Do not wash the barrel. Put the barrel in a padded vise so you can get to the chamber. This is the part many people miss: any cosmoline left in the chamber will, under firing conditions, turn into a hard, sticky residue that will cartridge insertion and extraction very difficult, or impossible. Use an oversized brass bore brush chucked into an electric drill to polish the chamber, using J-B Non-Embedding Bore Cleaner (blue label). A shotgun mop is useful for cleaning out the residue. Follow this with J-B Bore Bright (red label), and the mop again. Now clean the bore and chamber as usual, with solvent and patches.

If the stock is in good shape, reassemble the rifle. If the action is supposed to be shimmed in the stock, make sure those are in place, so you can torque down the action properly.

If, however, the stock is bare wood (Chinese Mosins frequently are), and grease is soaked in, you have more work to do. Using a paintbrush, paint the wood in small sections with mineral spirits, wait just a few minutes, then wipe clean with shop rags or paper towels. You should see grease coming to the surface. Repeat as many times as necessary. If it is summer, and hot outside, lay the stock in the sun, or in a black trashbag, and sweat out the grease. Wipe down, then repeat. This is very tedious, but the wood will never look good or feel good otherwise.

Once you are satisfied with the condition of the wood, you can do one of these to protect it:

• Paint the wood with Howard’s Feed-n-Wax. Let dry, repeat twice.This will be invisible.
• Use Boiled Linseed Oil to create a new but period finish.
• Use Tung Oil or other finish products to create a nice but non-period finish (only if you are not a collector. Among collectors, this is called “bubba’ing“).

Now reassemble the rifle.

by Sandy Keathley
McKinney Firearms Training.com

A shooting topic not often discussed is follow-through, probably because it is so simple. Well, simple in theory, but in the greater scheme of things, harder to prioritize than aiming and trigger work. It doesn’t actually happen until after the shot breaks.

In general, follow-through means to continue the fundamentals of stance and grip all the way through the shot, in the same way that a golfer or batter swings through the ball. If they relax at the moment of contact, the result will not be as good.

Shooters also use the term in a more specific way, meaning to continue to pull the trigger after the shot breaks, until it hits the frame of the gun. Granted, some triggers break very close to the frame, so there is almost no perceptible overtravel. This is generally a good thing, but either way, continuing to pull back until the trigger stops moving forces the shooter to maintain a certain discipline. Otherwise, there is a tendency to react suddenly to recoil, and that can impact the POI (point of impact) negatively. I see student’s fingers jumping off the trigger as the shot breaks. There is no way that can be good.

The next time you go to the range, try moving this up your list of things to remember as you shoot. It may take some practice, but it will help.

 

People new to shooting (and some not so new) are often confused by the bewildering array of descriptions of handgun ammunition available now (don’t get me started on rifle ammo!). Full Metal Jacket, Total Metal Jacket, Hollow Point, Round Nose, Frangible, Boat Tail, Steel Core, Steel Case, Aluminum Case, Sub-Sonic, +P, +P+, etc.

Let’s simplify this a little. Some of the terminology above relates to specific purposes like hunting or target shooting.If that is your interest, join a forum of like-minded people so you can learn more about those specifics. If your interest is more along the lines of basic marksmanship at 25 yards or less, or self defense, then your options come down to two:

1. FMJ / TMJ (Full Metal Jacket / Total Metal Jacket)
2. HP (Hollow Point)

Full Metal Jacket and Total Metal Jacket are similar enough to be called essentially the same.  These both contain lead bullets coated with a copper or zinc alloy, but with minor differences in the manufacturing process that have little impact on the average user.  FMJ/TMJ bullets are less expensive than HP, so they are typically used as range and training ammo, and have greater penetration than HP (sometimes too much).

Hollow Point bullets expand after leaving the barrel, and expand more on striking something. The point is not to cause greater damage, but to minimize over-penetration, which could be a danger to innocent bystanders. A side benefit is greater surface damage to tissue, which translates to greater stopping power. In a defensive situation, a high-powered caliber like .40 or .45 in FMJ could pass right through an attacker and injure/kill someone else. I have a Soviet military pistol that would go through two people and the wall behind them. However, smaller calibers like the .380 might not have enough penetration to even injure someone if they were wearing heavy winter clothing, so some people suggest using FMJ for these smaller calibers.

Both of these types of ammo are also available as Frangible ammo, which disintegrates on contact with anything harder than itself. This eliminates the possibility of ricochets off concrete walls.

Some mention should be made of +P and +P+ rated ammo. These are pressure ratings, indicating that these cartridges generate more force (+P) and much more force (+P+) than normal cartridges of the same caliber. Think of it as steroids for your gun. If the manufacturer of your gun specifies that your gun is approved for those higher pressures, then use them if you want, but only if the gun is made to handle it. Note that there is no industry specification for .380 +P, so these should not be used for that caliber, even if it is available (which it is).

Keep in mind these points about ranges and ammo:

• Some ranges do not allow uncoated lead bullets, as a possible health hazard.
• Some ranges do not allow steel-cased ammo, simply for economic reasons. They recycle brass casings, and do not want to sort out the steel.
• Most ranges do not allow steel core ammo, as it may throw off sparks in the bullet trap and be a fire hazard.
• Pretty much all ranges disallow tracer ammo, as it is definitely a fire hazard. 
• A range is generally the cheapest place to get ammo, unless you need something special, so I always buy extra when I go, to keep an inventory for the next run on ammo.

Knowing what to buy, and what not to buy, can save you both money and aggravation.