Aiming Your Pistol

Aiming can be a confusing subject.  I hope to make things simple and clear for you by providing some notes that you can refer to often as you develop as a shooter.  I have provided a video for you below to help with visualization.  I chose a different presenter for aiming as I want to introduce you to the various resources available online to help with your training.

​The video does a good job of showing proper sight alignment, or how your sights look when they are lined up with your dominant eye (I will cover how to determine which is your dominant eye in another post).  Some instructors will teach to keep both eyes open and some will teach you to close one.  I prefer to teach defensive shooters to keep both eyes as open as they can, but have found that some students do better when one eye is slightly closed or squinting to reduce the visual signal from that eye, which improves the signal from the dominant eye and can improve aiming while still allowing some vision in the non dominant eye.  This increases your ability to see a possible threat.

​Focusing your eye on the front sight is extremely important for accurate shooting.  This is difficult for some students to trust, but it is something you will need to gain confidence in if you want to develop into an accurate shooter.  Because of the limitation of the human eye to only be focused on one distance at a time, you have to choose.  Will it be the target, the rear sight, or the front sight?  Each will introduce the possibility of error.  Whatever of the image is out of focus can introduce an error into your sight alignment, or sight picture (to be discussed below). If that error is in your sight alignment, a small error on your sights can, and will, become a much larger error on your target.  A small error on sight placement over the target, or sight picture, will only be a small error on the target.  There are several good You Tube videos explaining this if you struggle with the idea.  While it is important for pistol shooting, at least in practicing, it is much more important when shooting longer ranges with rifles.  As the distance increases, so does the effect of sight alignment error, but again, any error in the properly aligned sights over a blurry target will only result in that same amount of error in the shot placement.

Now we get to sight picture, or placing the properly aligned sights center mass of visible target.  The target will be out of focus, or blurry, but the center of the out of focus target is still the center of the in focus target, so while there is possibility for error, it is low.  

Having a target that is out of focus does present some problems, so it needs further discussion.  First, it is difficult to not focus your eye on a possible threat, or to determine if the threat level is escalating without a clear view of the possible threat.  The fact is that in a defensive shooting incident it is highly unlikely you will be focusing on your front sight, unless you need a highly accurate shot and have time to consider your options.  In most cases, you will be presenting quickly, aiming by instinct, and firing quickly.  So why do we teach you to focus on the front sight.

Focusing on the front sight will develop the needed instincts that will take over in a critical incident.  This is commonly referred to as muscle memory.  Your brain develops specific signal pathways within your brain and to your muscles.  These are developed over time as you practice, practice, practice.  Once these pathways are developed you have muscle memory that will take over when you are presented with a high stress situation.

The aiming process for critical incident defensive shooting is different.  It is more of a point and shoot process, but can only work well if you have practiced with a high level of accuracy and developed the proper habits and muscle memory.  There may also be a need for a very well aimed shot in a defensive shooting incident, and your practice will pay off as you focus in on the front sight and handle situations that many are not prepared for.  That old adage of two to the chest and one to the head has origin in truth.  Sometimes that carefully aimed shot can be the difference between life and death. 

One last element is difficult to explain.  It is the metal focus and belief in the process as described above and your belief, a better word may be faith, that you will succeed; that you can be an excellent shot and you will hit the target.  Visualization can help with this.  Close your eyes, think yourself through each step of grip, sight alignment, sight picture, and visualize that bullet leaving the barrel and traveling to the center of the target.  This belief will steady you and keep you focused as you fire your shot and stay solid throughout.

A saying I have for my students is.  "Focus your eye on the front sight, focus all your attention on sight picture."  This helps with the mental discipline needed to keep your aligned sights on target through the process of delivering a well aimed shot.

I will close with a quick story.  I enjoy taking other instructor's courses and recently took one near my home.  The instructor took us to the range and pointed down the fifty yards to the pistol targets.  He asked us, "how many of you think you can hit that target".  What he didn't know was I had been there the night before with my brother-in-law who had a new 1911 we were trying out.  It wasn't anything special, just an out of the box low-end beauty, and we had both hit the same size targets from that very spot.  So, I raised my hand.  He dismissed my raised hand and said a shot from that distance was just a Hollywood myth.  We then went through the shooting exercises he had planned for us.  Then he said he would prove none of us could make that fifty yard shot.  He backed up the firing line and let us shoot.  I had great satisfaction as he walked down with me and saw the holes in my target.

I am nothing special.  I just apply these simple concepts and practice them.  You can be a great shooter.  You need to study the fundamentals, practice the right way, and believe in yourself.  It is not a mystery, and it is not for someone else.  Big or small, man or woman, strong hands or weak, you can hit the target, and with practice you can defend yourself and your family.

The next post will cover the most important element of accurate defensive shooting with a pistol, trigger control.

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