Took my first gun class last night - question about finger placement

[Tanfodude]

#2 and #3 is not absolute when it comes to shooting, same thing with grip.

 

[Minifire]

This is huge one for me. On days that I'm calm and relaxed it all goes well and the improvement continues. On days where something has me frazzled its like starting over again. On those days, every pull has to be calculated and walked through step by step or I'm all over the target from anticipating every shot.

Practice, practice, practice and then we practice some more.

You can never be sure that you will show stable results every time you fire. There are good days and bad days. But your medium results will grow with your level, if you practice constantly. Good luck!

 

[rhino]

For shooting groups and learning to really shoot the gun and know where it hits, nothing beats a front site focus.

There are lots of focus types. There are books on the subject. There are many threads on the forum, esp in the competition section, on the subject. But that's getting way advanced for this new shooter who doesn't even have their gun yet. I believe in "walk before you run" and wouldn't advise someone start with a target focus and have them expect to ever resolve accuracy/precision issues.

When the shooter gets to the point they aren't always hitting left and the groups tighten up reasonably, then is the time to experiment with where we focus.

This all coming from a guy who using a more target focus a LOT.



-rvb

Adding to what rvb says:

• Learning to press the trigger without disturbing the alignment of the gun is independent of and more important than the method used to align the gun (sighted or not).
• Shooting at reasonable defensive distances (let's say 15 yards and less) is far more forgiving of slight deviation of the alignment of the gun, but completely unforgiving of poor trigger manipulation at any distance beyond contact. When someone misses a target at a couple of yards, it's because of errors in manipulating the trigger and failing to keep the gun aligned during the press until the bullet leaves the muzzle.
• In my opinion, sighted vs. unsighted or sight focus vs. target focus are false dichotomies. The difficulty of the shot and not the application or situation determines how much front sight focus is required for a given individual. Shots from most retention positions require no view of the front sight, whereas hitting an eye socket at 15 yards requires pretty good front sight focus for most people.
• People who can't focus adequately (key word adequately) on the front sight for the shots they need to make in the time frames required to make them may be well served by a red dot or a laser or both as an adjunct to their iron sights.
• If someone chooses to believe that they can't see their sights under intense pressure and in condensed time frames, then there is no way they will ever be able to do it. Similarly, if someone doesn't practice using as much visual information from their sights as is needed to make a given shot, then they are unlikely to be able to do so under stress.
• People can and have seen their front sights clearly under pressure. Jim Cirillo is the classic example, who recounted that he could see the serrations on his front sight as he was pressing the trigger in multiple engagements with the NYPD stakeout squad in the 1970s. He was also an accomplished competition shooter who trained to shoot using his sights. Later in life when he could not longer see the sights, he learned to recognize alignment of the gun by the "silhouette" of the rear of the gun superimposed on the target, but he was still using something akin to iron sights to verify alignment of the gun prior to and during his trigger press.
• I have never been in a real-life situation that required me shooting. Given that, I have a significant amount of experience with well-constructed force-on-force scenarios in which I was able immerse myself adequately to get enormous dumps of epinephrine afterward. There were situations where I shot with a "soft" focus on the front sight, situations where I shot with looking over the slide, and situations where I distinctly remember seeing the front sight each time I pressed the trigger. All of those were based on the difficulty of the shot. Had I chosen to believe that I could not see my front sight under stress, I doubt I would have seen my front sight.

 

[Flagg]

Your shots landing left of center (or low left) are what the majority of right handed shooters deal with. Reverse that for left handed shooters. There's a lot more to this than a few sentences can get across (grip / stance / sight alignment / trigger press / follow through), but you're likely snatching the trigger rather than prepping and pressing it cleanly through the wall. Next time you're at the range, try this drill (fast forward to 14 minute mark for trigger work): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi5eZqc9H7I

And great work taking a class! Keep that up. I shot for a decade with little to no improvement. Finally took a few classes and now can self diagnose issues and feel like I get way more out of my training.