This is day… five? Six, maybe? of Larry arguing with people about shooting. The video he mentions is available on X or Facebook -Jack

Okay, in all seriousness I need to say something about that video rebuttal I did yesterday to stomp that one moron’s demonstration of his point shooting technique. Bear with me. I promise this will be the last post on the subject for a while, but I need to explain my vehemence on this topic.

I’m a writer now, but I was an instructor for a lot of years, and I take it real serious when people dispense objectively bad information that’s going to get someone gullible hurt.

I did a little testing this morning doing it his way… And no joking around, that shit is legit dangerous, and if this guy is actually teaching people like he claims, and anybody tries to do that in real life, innocent bystanders are going to get shot.  

So from what he claimed he was point shooting at 7 yards, pistol at full extension, two handed, and he hit a single target 15 times with a pattern (I won’t dignify it by calling it a group) that measuring on that same size target I have here would be about a foot from top to bottom shot, and about a foot from furthest side to side. He didn’t use a timer (of course) and you can hear him run the slide before he starts shooting so he didn’t go from the holster, and his splits sound like about .25 to .30 I’d guess.

Doing the same thing, no sights (which feels dumb and awkward) it took me like three tries to be able to beat his show off video. This isn’t bragging, because you shouldn’t brag about being able to do something stupid. I did it from the holster for practicality. With the gun at full extension it was actually more difficult to force myself to NOT use the sights that were right there. (I mean, the guns extended out there, why not?) Even with the dot off it was dumb, and eventually I had to put painters tape over the back of the glass to keep me from picking up the irons through it.

And as I explain this next part, I want you to understand that this dude presented the BEST point shooting skill video at that range I’ve seen in nearly thirty years of asking.

Basically he was doing a recoil control exercise. With a decent grip and body index you can ballistically masturbate and mostly hit a target at 7. Yay. I did this several times, and it’s kinda fun, but that’s it.

Now this is where it gets incredibly dangerous and stupid to think you can point shoot at that kind of range in an actual defensive scenario. I cut the strings down to 7 or 10 shots each because this was already a waste of ammo anyway and started adding complications.

Next up, I’d draw and take three steps to the side. Oh snap. All that practiced index went out the window and I’m sending what look like 50 yard buckshot patterns. Then I tried moving backwards while shooting. Even worse. Lots of deltas. Any movement introduced at all obliterates that whole bullshit “muscle memory” thing.

Draw and take a knee or squat like you’re shooting around low cover? Now the angle is super far off and I missed some shots entirely. My range is on a slope, but I already knew this was bull crap and didn’t waste any time moving the target stands, but you can guess what’ll happen if you change the elevation between you and the target from whatever your “muscle memory” was set at.

I threw up a second target three yards from the first one to do some transitions. Hits on 1 from the indexed position. Just swiveling to 2 had a massive drop off in accuracy and a couple complete misses.  Then I did some shooting on the move laterally trying to hit both from pointing. Oh, there were hits, but they weren’t anything to write home about. Keep in mind I’m doing this on my private range where I shoot while moving all the time. Most people don’t have access to a range that will let them practice that.

And keep in mind, NONE OF THIS WAS ANY FASTER THAN JUST AIMING. You get a dangerous degradation in accuracy for no gain in speed. At .3 splits doing all this stuff I should be like 90%+ A zone hits.

I pulled the tape off and messed around with coarse aiming, so dot off, just using the rear of the slide and shape of the gun as a rough aiming device, and that was way better than the pointing it like a finger thing, which makes me suspect some of these dudes spouting off about point shooting are actually doing coarse aiming and don’t know it. I know the Duke told you to just point it like a finger because a screen writer put that in a script 50 years ago, but humans don’t move our arm in line with the center of our torso and then use both hands to control the recoil of our finger.

For the people bringing up WW2 and Vietnam pistol shots from point shooting, go look at the sights on a GI 1911 and you’ll understand why that happened when they were in a hurry or the light was bad. The people saying you aren’t going to see the sights under stress are talking about hundred year old sights that are a tiny and nearly invisible compared to modern high visibility sights, and way less obvious than a glowing dot.

Could I eventually get to where I could reliably get hits doing all this stuff at 7 yards pointing? Sure. But for the amount of effort expended I’d be far better off doing it the not stupid way. There’s no return on this investment, because you aren’t going to have “muscle memory” for every angle or body position that might happen. (plus muscles don’t have memory, just stop with that)

What’s going to happen to the poor sucker who listens to this idiot and thinks the mag dump at trash method is viable, is that he’s going to end up needing his gun, and then the bad guy is going to move somehow and not just stand there and you get the idea.

(On that note, the 3 yards, 3 seconds, 3 shots thing? That’s not actual data. That’s just something somebody made up and the internet ran with it. Turns out most shootings aren’t static, and those that start at 3 might stop at 15)

Plus we know how this point and blaze method works now. Look at the shooting stats for places like Chicago and Baltimore. Lots of rounds getting sent at each other with enthusiastic pointing, a ton of misses and a small percentage of hits for relatively few fatalities because most of those are extremity shots, and a whole bunch of little kids getting shot off of swing sets down the block.

I think we can do better than that.

Dead horse beaten! 😀