On Teaching Shooting

Tam's post; http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/2010/04/chicks-can-hold-their-smoke.html got me to thinking.

When I met Harvey she was not a shooter. I was her first instructor.

Her first handgun shots were from a Glock 21. Her only difficulty was that the grips were too large for her hands.

Her first gun, of any kind, was a S&W Sigma in .357 SIG. It's still her first love. I had her handle everything first. We looked at both revolvers and autos. At the time, she said that the autos all felt better to her hand, but the revolvers seemed so much simpler. The first handgun I ever fired was an auto, there's more to learn but it's not really that difficult so we decided she'd just learn. And she did. I wish more "mentors" would take this to heart.

When the carry bug bit her, we realized that Sigma was a tad large for handy carry so we sought a smaller gun. A friend of hers had recently bought a S&W 642 (.38 Special) and such a snubby seemed ideal. The idea of an aluminum framed revolver rubs wrong to us so we went with the same size gun in stainless, the 640 (.357 Magnum). Her first shots from her snubby were Hornady Leverevolution rounds. Those are really intended for carbines! Her comments? "LOUD!"

Double-action only snubby revolvers in heavy loads are notoriously hard to shoot well, but she handled the 640 with aplomb. The range staff asked her several times if she was sure she'd never fired a little revolver before.

You Tube is awash with videos of boyfriends/husbands handing a .44 Magnum to their girlfriend/wife and having them shoot. The girl is invariably someone who doesn't seem to like guns and is obviously unfamiliar with shooting. Most of the time the thing jumping out of her hands just scares her and the guy (and his buddies) all guffaw. I hate this kind of thing. Congrats, guys, you just made a non-shooter out of someone you live with. She's going to resist any purchase of anything 'gun' from now on, even if it is in the most subtle of ways.

The Lovely Harvey, on the other hand, had no problem with a 4" Colt Anaconda firing 240gr Speer Gold-Dot. I like to think that is because I taught her correctly and never forced her to do something she wasn't ready to do. I also like to think that when I discovered I was doing something wrong (and teaching her that) that I admitted it, and we learned the new way together.

Harvey is my success story. Laurie is my failure.

Laurie is the friend with the 642. Her husband is the guy I refer to as "Libtard Lenny". He's an odd duck, a flaming liberal who likes guns.

He decided that she, with zero interest in shooting, would get a gun and carry permit. She'd taken the classes, but never processed her application. When Harvey got interested in her CCW, she cajoled Laurie into coming to the classes with her so that she'd have company; so Laurie took the class twice. Lenny strong-armed her into finishing the application this time and then it was time to get a gun.

I did the same thing with Laurie as I did with Harvey. We hit the gun shows and I made her handle every single handgun there. She has nerve damage in her right hand and is right-handed. She doesn't have a enough grip in her hand to work the slide on most small autos (blow back guns have stronger springs than locked breech). She is not mechanically inclined, so the simplicity of a revolver seemed better. The same accident that caused the nerve damage also affected her wrist strength in both hands. So we needed a light gun as well as a simple one.

This kept adding up to a revolver. She was able to work all of the controls every time, the 642 was light enough for her to hold and it was priced in her range. So she bought it and we went shooting.

I had forgotten some things. A lighter gun makes for more recoil. DAO means an atrocious trigger that requires a smooth pull, something Laurie had difficulty with because of the damage. Yet, she managed. We were making progress and she was learning and getting better. Practicing was acting as physical therapy for her left hand and fine motor skills and strength was returning.

Then we made the mistake of going to the range with Lenny and The Lovely Harvey. Laurie was a better shot than Lenny. She'd only been shooting for a whole month and she was better than he. Harvey was a lot better than he. The next time I took Laurie shooting, she was not as good as her first outing. Now her gun, that she had loved, was too big for her purse, to heavy(!), kicked too hard, trigger was too strong, grips felt wrong, etc... Odd, I thought. Turns out that Lenny had started telling her all this behind my back.

A week later she called to go shooting and had a new gun! Woot! It was an FN Browning Vest Pocket 1905 in .25 ACP. She showed that she could work the controls and she exclaimed over and over how happy she was with how it fit her hand. And she shot it well. Problem was, it was an ancient, used, gun. It was unreliable. It needed new springs and the magazine's lips were well worn. Rather than fix it, Lenny traded it in on a Beretta Tomcat. Note that LENNY traded it, not Laurie. This is because he went to the shop where he'd bought it and demanded warranty repairs. "On an 80 year old gun?" the shopkeeper asked. I am confident that the gun was repairable and would have been fine, but Lenny... well he was saying that I didn't know what I was talking about.

Good news, Laurie likes the Tomcat. Bad news, Lenny has taken over her training and she now shoots like he does.

That same day we all went shooting, I was zeroing my M-1903A3. Lenny was shooting his Kel Tec SU-16A at the extreme long range of 25 yards and getting torso sized groups. Once I was happy with my zero at 25 yards, I moved the target out to 100. Lenny said, under his breath, "Harvey, I can't even see it, I'll bet he can't even hit it." The kid in the next lane overheard and aimed his spotting scope at my target. I fired 5 shots unsupported off-hand. The kid says, "He's hitting it. Good grouping too." I had a nice 4" group. Lenny has never gone shooting with me again.

I think it is because he knows all he wants to know about shooting, but when he compares what he knows to what I know, it's obvious there's more to learn. That bothers him. I know several people who know more about shooting than I do. It bothers me. My solution is to attempt to learn what they know! It's working, my shooting is always getting better.

Harvey has a pile of friends who are eager to learn shooting. I am eager to duplicate my success with Harvey.