At a shooting competition at my club last June, I saw again surprise on a few men’s faces as they learned they are not action heroes.
I don’t mean this like the anti-gun elite sometimes frames armed citizens, as men with Jungian wish fantasies about using a gun to stop a bad guy.
I mean this plainly, as in men who have some experience with firearms, say as hunters or competitive shooters, who simply assume they’ll be good at a shooting sport or skill they’ve never tried.
I have been guilty of this, most notably when I first competed in my club’s biannual four-day competition. It combines rifle, handgun and shotgun competitions with fishing (casting distance and accuracy), canoeing (timed) and campcraft skills (timed events that include fire starting). Everyone who first does this competition comments that it is humbling to learn that each skill requires the right gear, expert guidance and dedicated practice. I remember walking away surprised, humbled and hungry to learn and develop these new skills—and I still feel that way.
So, I smiled and nodded when a new member, who had failed for the third time to qualify with his handgun on a 50-yard bullseye target, said, “This is so humbling. I just thought I could do this.”
As I was a safety officer for the competition that afternoon, after we checked and replaced the targets, I stood behind him to see what he was doing. “You’re not following through,” I told him after his first shot.
He asked what I meant. I explained that he should try to bring the red dot on his M&P back to the center of the target as quickly as possible after accepting the recoil. I told him this was a way to stay on target through the trigger squeeze. He did as instructed and qualified.
I ran into this gentleman at dinner, and he said it was like that at nearly every event. I assured him I had the same experience, as does everyone. Shooting skills need to be learned and reinforced with training.
The NRA got its start as a training organization to make sure the citizens of this armed nation appreciate their freedom by having the skills to safely and effectively use this hands-on right. This is why we mention nrainstructors.org so often in these pages and why we constantly give links to other training resources.
What makes this all-the-more interesting is there is room for individualism and nostalgia in this learning process. I competed in bullseye that day with a Smith & Wesson Model 28 “Highway Patrolman” my father once carried as a small-town police chief. It was heartening to find that the old gun—with the help of a modern red dot—could compete with more modern competition pistols at 50 yards, but, as with everyone, learning to shoot this revolver—which even when shot in single-action still has a long trigger pull—at that range took a lot of humbling practice.
