Let me share the 5 important “S” techniques of becoming a good shooter.

1. Safety

Safety should be the primary concern of any shooter, whether you are a target shooter, skeet shooter, plinker, action shooter or training for combat.  Remember Colonel Cooper’s four rules of gun safety is imperative.  Mastering safe weapons handling will reduce the risk of injuries or death while training or competing. If you ever have to use a firearm for its intended purpose it will reduce the risk of friendly fire casualties.

2. Stance

The position of your body and your grip are major components to how accurate you will be.  In practical vs. target shooting there is the additional need to be flexible in stance.  This is in order to be able to move quickly in and out of the shooting position and also to be able to move to, and be able to better utilize cover.  In most positions we shoot from the waste up.  There are many arguments as to foot location.  What is critical here is that your weight is evenly distributed between your feet (if standing) or other ground contact points (other positions.)  Do not worry to much about textbook pictures of shooting positions.  Odds are that if you are using a textbook position you are not using cover and concealment correctly.  Your attacker also will not wait for you to get into your textbook stance!

3. Sight Picture

This is how you choose where you want your bullet to go.  There are a variety of sights available, peep, v-notch, bead, red dot, telescopic etc.  The point of all of these is to give you a reference of where your bullet should travel when you squeeze the trigger.  You must master your particular sight type.  I am a firm believer in starting off with iron sights.  I feel that using iron sights is like stick shift cars.  You might think you drive well with an automatic, but if you can’t drive a stick you will never really understand driving.  This doesn’t mean I’m not a believer in modern technology.  It just means that you should always have a back up and your iron sights are your back up.

4. Squeeze

The manipulation of the trigger to fire the gun.  An effective trigger squeeze requires a familiarity with your firearm that can only come with extensive dry firing, as triggers vary greatly from gun to gun.  But the universal rule in accurate shooting is that the trigger “break” when the hammer or striker falls should be a surprise.  Remember that the trigger pull is a “squeeze” not a jerking action.  When dry firing, fixate your front sight on an object and gently squeeze the trigger.  Your front sight should not move.  If it does, you’re not squeezing it, you’re pulling or jerking the trigger.

5.  Speed

Learn to be fast and accurate.  In this day in age, it’s possible that multiple attackers could converge upon you.  Be careful not to shoot so fast so as to spray bullets carelessly, that’s bad.  But speed and precision is critical.  Concentrate on accuracy first, the speed will come later.  Remember things like not letting the front sight leave your target while lining up for the next shot.  And keeping your sight picture while reloading.  Remember good follow through and if you are shooting a semi-auto, release the trigger only to the reset point, no further.

I wish you successful shooting and God forbid if it should happen…successful self defense.