{"id":22,"date":"2015-04-06T08:53:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-06T13:53:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2016-05-08T19:32:39","modified_gmt":"2016-05-09T00:32:39","slug":"marksmanship-for-self-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/marksmanship-for-self-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"Marksmanship for Self-Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is the scenario: you are at a gas station late at night, or maybe in a parking garage or downtown parking lot.\u00a0 You see someone running straight for you at full speed.\u00a0 He may be on the run from police, but he wants your car keys, and will club you or kill you to get them, whatever it takes.\u00a0 You draw your carry gun, but have just seconds to stop the threat.<\/p>\n

Flash back to your training.\u00a0 You are standing at a range, aiming at a paper target that never moves.\u00a0 You want to hit that X in the middle, about the size of a dime.\u00a0 You know how the sights work: the front post needs to be in the middle of the notch, the tops level.\u00a0 If you are off by a hair’s width, and\/or don’t work the trigger smoothly, you will miss the X by 2-4 inches, more if it is a shorter gun.\u00a0 You struggle to relax, clarify your vision, pause your breathing, keep the alignment, squeeze the trigger.\u00a0 Something get out of sync, so you start over.\u00a0 Now you’ve been aiming for 30 seconds, and your arm muscles start to shake.\u00a0 You stop, shake it off, start over.\u00a0 Finally, the stars align, you make the shot, and miss the X by one inch.\u00a0 That is still very good.\u00a0 Success!<\/p>\n

Success?\u00a0 Not really.\u00a0 Flash forward to your crisis situation.\u00a0 You don’t have to hit the 3rd button on his shirt (if you can even see it) to ruin his day, and you don’t have 60 seconds to do it.\u00a0 This is the real world, and you may have only 2 seconds to save your life.\u00a0 If you have not learned flash-sighting<\/b><\/i> or point-shooting<\/b><\/i>, do that now, before you need it<\/u>.<\/p>\n

The aiming described above is more suited to competitive target shooting than to self defense.\u00a0 The fact is that most self defense shooting happens at 3-4 yards, the attacker doesn’t have an X on his chest, and half of your skills will evaporate, anyway.\u00a0 While accuracy is important, the perfect shot you don’t have time to make is useless, compared to the shots you do make, that hit him anywhere.<\/p>\n

\"sight-alignment-errors\"<\/a>
\nFlash-sighting<\/b><\/i> is based on simple geometry.\u00a0 At a short distance (3-4 yards), if you can see the front post anywhere in the notch<\/u>, you will hit a human-sized target.\u00a0 Even 4 inches off is still a hit.\u00a0 Start with the pistol at eye level, and push straight out.\u00a0 That gives you at least 1\/2<\/span> second advantage in lining up the sights just to the point that you can see the front post anywhere in the rear notch.\u00a0 As soon as you can see that level of alignment, fire.\u00a0 Immediately re-acquire the target and fire again.\u00a0 Most ranges won’t allow you to draw from a holster, so lay the gun on the bench, in the same condition it would be carried (decocked, safety on, etc.).\u00a0 Using the stopwatch on your phone, or with a friend timing you, see how fast you can grab the gun, get a flash picture, and put two shots on a B-27 target at 3 yards.\u00a0 Your goal is 3 seconds.<\/p>\n

Point-shooting<\/b><\/i> is even more meat-ball.\u00a0 That is for even closer contact, 2 yards or less, where you don’t have time to even bring the gun to eye level.\u00a0 If you have a proper grip, the thumb on your shooting hand should be parallel to the ground.\u00a0 Point the gun at the target using your thumb as a guide.<\/p>\n

Both of these techniques need to be practiced extensively.\u00a0 If you have them in your “toolbox”, you can feel more confidant in a crisis situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is the scenario: you are at a gas station late at night, or maybe in a parking garage or downtown parking lot.\u00a0 You see someone running straight for you at full speed.\u00a0 He may be on the run from police, but he wants your car keys, and will club you or kill you to … Continue reading “Marksmanship for Self-Defense”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyfirearmstraining.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}