Learning to Shoot a Handgun

[photoracer]

The best money you can spend right now is on a couple of hours with a good firearms instructor. Early on it is easy to get into bad habits that are difficult to undo later on.

Ditto on this.

 

[Tyeraxus]

Thanks everybody. I did some dry-fire practice last night with the "balance a coin" trick, and I'm going to look into an instructor or three. I'm going to have to treat learning to shoot properly as a job to do rather than a hobby to enjoy, I think, and block out time in advance for it rather than my current "shoot when I can" approach.

 

[Tungsten]

When I first start shooting my handgun, I used rather large targets at close range. My "grouping" was all over the place. So I went back, looked at a bunch of youtube videos, read a bunch of articles, etc. My grouping was only slightly better. Then I decided for S&G to move the target back (maybe only another 5 yards). My grouping still wasnt great, but it was a lot better.
I realized what was happening was that I focusing on the target as opposed to one single spot on the target. By moving it back, it forced me to focus more on a smaller area. This demonstrated the phrase "aim small, miss small." The other thing that helped quite a bit was not completely resetting the trigger.

I eventually went to an instructor and he said I had the fundamentals down. At that point I really only needed more practice (getting rid of flinching, anticipating and building finger strength).