AND LEARNING HOW TO SHOOT.
A general outline of the things you need to know.
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AND LEARNING HOW TO SHOOT. A general outline of the things you need to know.
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It is really impossible for me to tell you everything that you might want to know to buy your first gun and to learn how to shoot. No "one best gun" exists, and there are hundreds of different ones to choose from. Do not get hung up on just one point - like how many rounds one gun holds over another or how much power one caliber has. The most important thing is that the gun fits your hand and you are able to use it accurately and safely. A small weak person might not be able to hold and aim a large, full size 44 magnum but would have no problem with a Beretta .32 caliber with a tip up barrel. It really depends on you and what your background is and what you really want to use the gun for. This is not rocket science so it is not hard to learn the basics of shooting but it does take some practice and knowledge to be a real good shooter. (Adding additional guns onto you license is easy, only cost $5.00 and only takes a couple of weeks. After you get your license you can try out other guns at a range or gun club. SEE: AMENDING YOUR LICENSE, ADDING & REMOVING GUNS & OTHER CHANGES) For the cheapest shooting please look at WHY YOU SHOULD BUY AN AIR GUN. With a $50 air gun, $10 worth of pellets and CO2 cylinders and a cardboard box you can set up a safe practice range at your house or in your back yard where you can impress your friends and neighbors with your shooting ability. It is also a way to let people who might be interested in shooting learn how easy it is and how much fun it can be. I would suggest that you buy two books to start for your firearms library.
If you only want to have a handgun for the home, do not want to spend much money and do not plan to practice often then many would suggest a 4 inch quality used revolver in 357 Magnum or 38 special. (You can shoot a 38 special in a 357 Magnum but not the reverse. The bullets are the same size but the 357 case is slightly longer and more powerful and therefore slightly harder to shoot because of the additional recoil.) If you are a hunter and want to use your new handgun for hunting then you might want to get a single shot handgun in a hunting caliber with a 10 inch barrel and a scope. If you know that you really want to do some action shooting you might want to spend a few thousands and buy a semi-automatic race gun in 38 super, 45 Cal. or any other popular caliber. How about an old style single action revolver in 45 LC for some Cowboy Action Shooting? No matter what you plan to do you will never go wrong or waste your money buying a 22 caliber handgun. A new basic semi-automatic can sell for $225 to $350. These guns will be accurate enough for informal 'plinking', target practice and beginning competitions. Most will shoot within 1 (+.5/-.2) inch at 25 yards so they should hold for the .9 inch center target at 50 feet that you will normally be shooting at. Ammunition will effect accuracy so it will pay for you to try several brands to find out what shoots the best at the price that you want to pay. (You might find a used gun cheaper but have it checked by a gunsmith or buy it from someone who will be willing to fix it or take it back if something is wrong.) New design and manufacturing methods allow many of these cheaper handguns to be almost as accurate as handguns costing over twice as much. However, balance, feel and trigger pull will not be quite as good. The main reason to own a 22 cal. is that it is cheap to shoot. 50 rounds of new 38 caliber ammunition will cost almost as much as 500 rounds of 22 cal. ammo. All of the techniques of hold, trigger pull, stance, safe handling, positions, and aiming are the same no matter what the gun caliber. It is just much cheaper to practice and learn using 22 cal. ammo. The amount of money you will spent learning to shoot using even the cheaper ammunition of a larger caliber will more than cover the cost of a modern 22. (It cost about $9.11 per 50 rounds of the cheapest 9 MM factory ammo or $182.20 with tax for 1,000 rounds. 1,000 rounds of 22 cost about $21.45 with tax. $182.20 - $21.45 = $160.70 or almost enough to buy a 22. A 1,000 rounds is not as many rounds as it seems like to a new shooter. A ten mile drive was a long way when you first started driving.) If you know that you are going to be doing lots of shooting with a 22 cal. then you can spend the money to buy a better quality 22 or buy one that you can have worked on later to turn it into a "tack-driver". Switching to a custom barrel, having a trigger job, having the gun tuned and adding a red dot sight are some of the common modifications that allow that fun gun to turn into a contest winning tack-driver if you have practiced, and can shoot that well.
Learning BULLSEYE SHOOTING will help you in all types of
pistol shooting. It focuses on the basics, sight picture, trigger control,
etc. This page has a lot of the information that you will want to read
to get off to a good start. Bullseye Pistol Shooting is a popular and
easy competition and many of the Another great site is the Army Marksmanship Unit Pistol Training Guide.
Another great read by one of the leaders in the field is:
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| INDEX
Grades Targets Ranges Pistols Safety Rules Parents Guide Conduct on the Range Glossary |
There are 8 ISSF (International Sport Shooting Federation) matches, five of which are shot at the Olympic Games and also at Club, State and National Championship levels. The Olympic matches are Rapid Fire, Free Pistol, Air Pistol (Mens and Womens) and Womens Sport Pistol. The other ISSF events are Standard Pistol and Center Fire. The Center Fire match is also included at Commonwealth Games. The other matches controlled by Pistol Australia include Black Powder, and Service Pistol events. |
For
more information about shooting check out Pilkington Competition Equipment
LLC web page at Pilkguns.com.
Click on the COACHING AND INFORMATION tab. They have some great pictures
of range setups and some of the best guns that you can shoot.QUESTIONS AND VARIABLES IN PICKING A GUN
As I said, no "one best gun" exists and there are hundreds of different ones to choose from. Every choice will be a compromise so you will have to make several decisions.
Changes in the weight of your gun, caliber, size and other variables have a marked effect on how a gun shoots and handles. I once shot a very small single action 22 caliber magnum revolver. Even though the bullet was only a 22 caliber, because of the light weight and very small grip, the gun almost flew out of my hand every time I fired it. Besides not being able to hold on to it, I could not keep the bullets inside a 6 inch ring at 10 feet. The gun was unusual, but I would rather have it than nothing if I needed something for defense. Another time I shot a very large and heavy big caliber single action handgun using very powerful hand loaded ammunition. It took me more than a few seconds to recover from the recoil and the gun was so heavy that it was hard for me to aim and hold it steady on the target. If I had a way to rest the gun and really needed to shoot at something with a very heavy and large bullet and I only wanted to fire a few rounds, (as in hunting,) the gun would have been fine.
Some general relationships:
The following picture is a full size target showing
what difference ammo can make.
(NOTE: With the cheep ammo, one round out of every 15 to 20 rounds
fail to fire so it should never be used in any competition or when
you are doing any serious practice. It is OK for plinking but if you
shoot it all the time in practice you are not going to be able to refine
your aiming and "calling your shots" and you are going to get used
to having every few shots fail to fire. When it comes time to shoot
in a competition you are going to waste a fraction of a second after
each shot and break your concentration on shooting to check to see
if you had a "DUD".
SAFE STORAGE OF YOUR GUNS
Please check out this web site for a great
discussion on storing your guns.
You wanted to be a better shooter?
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The Four Real Secrets of Shooting High Scores
FROM: The Beaudesert Pistol Club, Queensland, Australia
D’ya wanna know the secrets of how to shoot really good scores? Well I’m gonna tell you anyway. The are actually three main secrets and the fourth is something else again. A bit metaphysical really. The first thing I have to tell you is that these aren’t things you are just going to be able to do straight off. Unfortunately they will require some work on your part - so - the question then becomes - how determined are you to want to learn to shoot really well? If the answer is “Not that much” then you needn’t bother reading any further. This is for those that have a strong desire to shoot well and are prepared to do the necessary work to achieve this. Now you may have heard of some of these things before but you won’t have heard them in quite the same way as I’m now going to tell you. Righto, let’s go.
1. Holding the Pistol Really still.
There are two aspects to this. First you need to teach yourself to be able to hold the pistol or just a 3 to 5 pound weight at arms length using a proper aligned stance, for a full minute without getting the shakes or collapsing with fatigue. You get there by starting out holding for 10 secs, resting for 10 secs then holding for 10 secs etc for 10 repeats, then rest for 5 mins. Then do it all again at least for 5 more series. Do this for the first 3 days or nights, then extend your hold to 20 secs, but still keeping the 10 sec rest - 10 times, 5 mins rest then 5 more series of the same. Do this for 3 days or nights then increase the hold by another 10 secs to 30 secs, still retaining the 10 sec rest period. If you follow this progression, you will get to the stage of being able to hold for 60 sec periods without any great distress followed by the same 10 sec break etc. All through this period you are trying not only to hold your arm out but to hold it as still as you can.
2. Maintain Perfect Sight Alignment.
When you can hold easily for a full minute without shaking, then you start to worry about sight alignment and foresight focus. First up, if you can’t hold clear focus on the foresight, go see an optometrist. Get him to make you a lens which allows you to focus clearly on your foresight only. That means that everything else short of that will be a bit blurred and everything beyond that including the target will also be blurred. If it is made properly your eye will focus clearly on your foresight without any effort. Now practice coming up on aim , align your sights, focus on the foresight but don’t do anything with the trigger. Initially, you are aiming to hold the sight alignment as perfect as you can whilst ignoring any other movement. Do this against a blank wall - no aiming marks OK?
You need to practice doing this for at least a couple of weeks with the usual 10 sec break in between holds. You must force yourself to keep perfect sight alignment. Instead of thinking about your hand and arm moving the pistol so that alignment is maintained, think that it is your eye that is moving the sights into perfect alignment. This helps get it into your brain that it has to become a sub-conscious act. This gets easier as you practice. Now after a couple of weeks, put an aiming mark on the wall, and practice holding your by now perfect sight alignment against the aiming mark, trying to keep the whole sight picture as still as you can. Imagine that it is your eye again, that is forcing the aligned sights onto the aiming mark. Do this for the usual 1 minute holds with 10 sec breaks in between. Initially you will be all over the shop but by focusing hard on the foresight, you can actually condition yourself fairly quickly to minimize your swaying and movement. Say to yourself while on hold “keep still” and keep saying it to yourself. If you are focusing really hard on the foresight you can almost put yourself in a trance where holding everything still suddenly becomes very easy. Do not practice pulling the trigger at this stage.
3. Pressing the Trigger Perfectly.
This is undoubtedly the hardest thing to learn and it will take time. The good thing about it is that you can practice this anywhere, even without your pistol. There is a natural tendency when you hold onto something for the various muscles in your hand and wrist to move sympathetically when you move your forefinger. Practice gripping your pistol while sitting down watching TV. You don’t have to come on aim. Just get a firm grip on the pistol and then relax the forefinger (it can be done!) and practice moving your forefinger back and forth onto the trigger, while keeping a firm grip. While you are doing this you can feel and see if your other fingers or your whole grip is tightening up or moving in sympathy. Keep practicing this until you feel confident that your forefinger is moving totally independently of your hand.
Now practice pressing the trigger through to release. Try to keep your finger relaxed. This gets harder as the trigger weight gets heavier. Persevere! You should be able to press the trigger right through to release without anything happening to your other fingers or your grip. When you are happy with this, start practicing pressing the trigger while holding the pistol really steadily, with sights aligned on an aiming mark. Keep your trigger finger relaxed. Practice, practice, practice. This is the hardest thing to do and so it requires the most practice.
4. The “Metaphysical” Bit.
Learning the above, if applied diligently, will get your scores up to A grade or even higher. Now is the time to try to take this process on to a higher plane. Take up your pistol, check your grip, come on aim with your sights perfectly aligned and held still on an aiming mark. Now start pressing your trigger as before and as you are pressing it, stop thinking about it. Just stay on aim and focus hard on the foresight, maintaining that perfect alignment. Don’t try to make the trigger go off! If after about 10 secs the trigger hasn’t released, take your finger off the trigger, lower the pistol and relax. Now repeat the whole process. You must not, ever, consciously try to make the trigger release. You may have to lower the pistol many times before this works, but what you are trying for is, as you are focusing hard on the foresight, your trigger finger will eventually press the trigger through to release sub-consciously. This is the real secret of the top shooters. The sub-conscious shot. You need to practice doing this every chance you get until it is firmly set into your mind. After learning this, never consciously fire a shot. If the shot won’t go off by itself, put the pistol down and try again - it doesn’t matter how long it takes. Persevere and it will work.
| SIG Arms | http://www.sigarms.com/ |
| Browning Firearms | http://www.browning.com/products/catalog/firearms/firearms.htm |
| Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc. | http://www.ruger-firearms.com/ |
| Beretta | http://www.beretta.com/ |
| Smith & Wesson | http://www.smith-wesson.com/Products/Firearms/select_firearm.cfm |
GENITRON.COM
A great web site with a searchable database of over 2,225 handguns.
Gives detail info on each gun including expected price.
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