When it comes to shooting, and with many other things, I am not an expert. I know a thing or two, but I am most definitely not an expert. And that’s okay with me. When it comes to shooting, hunting, or any other activity, I still have a lot to learn.
It might come as a shock that I don’t consider myself an expert in the field of firearms. After all, I have taught them, competed with them, hunted with them, built them, and customized them throughout the years. There are several reasons I do not refer to myself as a firearms expert, chief among them is that firearms are not a source of income (much the opposite, in fact), nor am I able to devote the requisite amount of time that it requires to become an expert.
There are individuals out there, floating around the internet mostly, who claim, for whatever reason, to be an expert. Every field has them, and especially sports. Any idiot who played a sport or coached a team has their own methodology, their own style you have to copy right now. All it takes is some self advertising and maybe some actual skills (not required).
For example, there is a brand of firearms accessories out there called Tapco. Based on my experience I cannot, in good conscious, advise you to buy any of their stuff. Granted, my experience was nearly three years ago, and their quality may have improved drastically since then. Then again, I saw a rifle stock break, and even more tellingly, I witnessed over 100 of their M16/AR15 magazines fail on the same day. Yet, there are people out there (again, on the internet), who will say that Tapco equipment is all you need, it never fails, and is full of fairy dust. Whether those people are getting paid by Tapco to advertise, or truly believe what they are saying, I am not in a position to say. What I can say is that based on my experience, Tapco stuff is dirt.
There are other brands out there with the same phenomenon. Some are actually pretty good or have good reputations even. The point is that you should always be looking for another source of information, and everyone who spews forth information should probably start it with some variation of “based on my experience,” because everyone is different.
When it comes to technique, it is even more important to properly research and vet your experts. Anyone who claims that you have to do something a particular way to avoid being “wrong” is probably wrong themselves. A personal experience with that comes from my time teaching at the USAF Academy firing range. A lot of the other Cadet Instructors would recite their memorized lines from the manual, and would not offer potential alternatives to things like stance, grip, and how many eyes you should have open when you’re shooting.
For those of you who don’t know, the Military (even the Air Force) loves standardization, and the military (mostly) teaches to the lowest common denominator. This often leads to a lot of questions (at least from Cadets) as to why we do certain things a certain way, or if they can change them. With my time as an instructor, and as a Cadet, I found that simply by providing an alternative, you can often drastically improve performance.
Case in point, when I taught on the M9 Beretta 9mm handgun, we were supposed to instruct our students to use a “proper” Weaver style stance, thumbs down grip, and shoot with both eyes open. The Weaver stance has the shooter standing with the support side foot slightly in front of the shooting side foot, and the shooting arm only slightly bent and the support hand wrapped around the shooting hand with the arm bent. The thumbs down grip meant that you held your thumbs below the slide on the pistol, as opposed to on top of it.
A few of the Cadet Instructors wouldn’t really allow any deviations. I, on the other hand, like to give my students a few alternative ways to do it. I shoot in different stances from time to time, and spent a lot of time on my own doing research, watching videos and reading articles about different shooting stances and methods.
So I would always make sure to quickly demonstrate a thumbs forward/up grip, and the Isoceles shooting stance, shown below. I would also inform the students that if they were having a hard time focusing on the front sight with both eyes open, as I sometimes do, that it was okay to squint, or even shut, their non dominant eye in order to focus.
I don’t have any hard and fast statistics or even soft and slow anecdotal evidence, but I think my students tended to have slightly higher scores. Perhaps because they had a few more tools in their toolbox.
In the world of firearms and firearms instruction, I have one specific hero that, I will admit, I’m a bit biased towards: Travis Haley. He’s a former Marine, Private Security Contractor, firearms instructor, and entrepreneur. I first ran across him through the old Magpul Dynamics DVD’s (Art of the Dynamic Handgun, Art of the Tactical Carbine, etc.) and through a few YouTube videos here and there from his time in Iraq. All that is fine and good, but what makes him stand out in a crowded field, at least in my mind, is his study of Bio mechanics. In many of his instructional videos, he talks about doing what is right for you and your shooting. Rather than reject alternate theories, he puts forth as much information as possible, and allows his students to pick their own path. If it isn’t working for a student, he will help them tweak to make them faster and more accurate. And Travis Haley is fast and accurate. I’m gonna link his YouTube profile at the end of the article so you can take a look for yourself.
All this ranting and raving isn’t to tell you to eschew formal training and to blaze your own path. Rather, I would hope that I conveyed how important it is to seek out properly vetted formal training. Hopefully, your instructors will be able to give you a few more tips and tools for your shooting. Just remember, any idiot with a keyboard can call themselves an expert.
Shoot safe,
Spencer
Travis Haley Videos:
I suspect that I may be a bit biased, but this was written very well. In addition, after having several slide tears in my hand, I found it very interesting. Small frame guns and large hands often don’t mix well. GP