Learning to shoot

Cherry Brigand

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Have been a gun owner since i became old enough to buy a pistol.
Had my ccl in my previous state but have barely target shot in the last 20 years.
I finally feel like it's time to dive back in and get recerted for my ccl. Ammo- for my Sig P229- is back to about 40 c a round so I'm likely going buy 1000 and start it all back up.
Looking for shooting tips, best places to buy ammo, etc and otherwise foster a discussion about safe gun shooting and the hobby.
This is in Mayberry so no political BS

@Deorum @TR0UBLE SH00TER
 
Honestly, we’ve always bought our ammo at Academy or Bass Pro

Also, the best shooting ranges from what I’ve seen are the smaller, local places where you can get to know people and have them track your groupings / accuracy over time. It’s also nice to have a home base to send guns to if you choose to buy online
 
Consider picking up a 22 pistol to augment your practice... much cheaper ammo. Not a replacement for practicing with your other firearm, but it will allow you practice more without breaking the bank.
 
For real sherbro, something people rarely ever talk about is the crazy amount of lead pollution at shooting ranges.

If you want to start practicing and you're spending more time at the range, this is going to sound silly but for your own sake it would be better to wear a mask in addition to ear protection so that you can reduce the amount of particles you're breathing in.

Indoor ranges are by far the worst for this, but there can still be high lead levels in the dust that gets kicked up / airborne at an outdoor range.

If using an indoor range, long sleaves would also be best and one should shower and throw everything into the laundry as soon as you're home.

Loaded with lead: How gun ranges poison workers and shooters (seattletimes.com)
 
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We like to go the range as a family at least once a month. I buy locally and from trusted web sources. Usually try to purchase 1000 rounds at a time or at least 250. I'd stay away from sites that gather deals for you & try to find the deals directly from the source. Don't buy from Optics Planet. You may find yourself waiting for ammo their site says thet have in stock.
 
Have been a gun owner since i became old enough to buy a pistol.
Had my ccl in my previous state but have barely target shot in the last 20 years.
I finally feel like it's time to dive back in and get recerted for my ccl. Ammo- for my Sig P229- is back to about 40 c a round so I'm likely going buy 1000 and start it all back up.
Looking for shooting tips, best places to buy ammo, etc and otherwise foster a discussion about safe gun shooting and the hobby.
This is in Mayberry so no political BS


@Deorum @TR0UBLE SH00TER
As far as the ammo:
I usually only buy ammo in bulk except for hunting ammunition. https://ammoseek.com/ is the
best place (search engine) that I know of for in stock bulk ammo.


And the shooting:
Learn about the specifics of your firearm. That includes the steps to the function and how the
different parts contribute to malfunctions.

Practice, using snap caps, used casings, and dummy rounds, how to clear malfunctions. Conduct
magazine change drills and dry fire draws.

Dry fire the hell out of your weapon. Modern weapons don't tend to have issues with dry firing.
Consult your owner's manual for details though.

Go to the range and practice in stages. Practice grouping your weapon at the range you zero at.
Then zero the weapon and confirm the zero.

Practice multiple target engagement. Then practice live fire target engagement with magazine
changes.

When you are comfortable try practicing what we call reflexive fire. This includes engaging
targets to the left and right, and focus on transitioning your body to the appropriate direction.

Practice moving and shooting.

Start with dry fire, then move to live fire only after you can comfortably and safely succeed on
dry fire.

Practice starting in different positions such as sitting down, being behind a barricade, and reacting
to situations where you are trying to defend yourself, such as in your car (dry fire only) and in your
house (dry fire only).




---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Remember, expertise does not come from special training. It comes from the basics. Practice the
basics until they are second nature.

But, I'd recommend you to sign up and take at least a basic pistol class at a local training facility
as a refresher. Always good to sharpen skills that become a bit dull. It might be a bit pricey, but
it's well worth it. Then practice, practice and practice some more.

"Owning a piano does not make one a pianist any more than owning a handgun makes one
a good shooter
." - Jeff Cooper, founder of Gunsite

It's always been nice having his world class training facility right in my backyard:

https://www.gunsite.com/



Plenty to be learned just from their YT videos:
https://www.youtube.com/c/1Gunsite/videos
 
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Buds Gun Shop has good prices on guns. Though I tend to buy local b/c I'm in California and want to ensure it's all good should I ever get questions on it.

Sportsmen Warehouse has great prices and great deals by me.

I also thought about buying an air replica gun to practice with....heh. They even have working slides, blowback, and field stripping now! It's nuts!

https://www.umarexusa.com/glock-g17-gen-4-177-black
 
Plenty of tactical training courses. I don't know where you are, but if places like Cali have tactical shooting courses, chances are there's one in where you're currently live. Don't just go to the range and plinking all by yourself since you could do that in your own backyard and save the embarrassment for everyone.
 
I was an IDPA (EX) and could've probably qualified for the (MA) at my peak.
Started off actually a very poor pistol shooter but powered through it and when it took, it took hard.
This was when ammo was WAY cheaper and shooting 200 rounds a day was something anyone who worked full time could do and not notice. Different times.

Practice, practice, practice. The gun world has a lot of Autism built into its best practices, but the internet has debunked A LOT of that old horseshit. The mean skill level of shooters seems to have gone way up (or maybe the internet just makes it seem that way) but I used to travel for shoots and there just seems to be a lot more guys shooting at a high level,

Be humble and focus on improving skill, ignore the ego and testosterone bullshit. Those guys get humiliated when it comes time to prove what they can do, every time. Do not get involved with unlimited classes in IPSC, its not real.

Learn to reload.

Speed counts but (protip), if you want to get razor sharp and deadly AF, once you get your fundamentals down, practice shooting while moving. Disallowed in some competititions but the nastiest possible advantage IRL. Its hard but when the lightbulb goes iff, it stays on forever. I had a 10 year hiatus from shooting (like, at all) and when I picked it back up, I was still basically at a higher level than everyone around me and could hit 7 yard heads in a trot.

Focus less on guns, more on shooting skill. Can't emphasize this enough. The gun world is absolutely riddled with the cancer of morbidly obese 'gun theorists' and prattling Tactical Toms who all have 423 different fireams but are impotent as shooters... but such is the nature of every hobby, people who emphasize gear over skill, the guys on woodworking forums who have $15K in ultra high end tools to build birdhouses, the guitar players who babble about 'tone' on guitar forums all day and own $60K in musical gear but have been playing the same three pentatonic scales since 1989. If I could boil it all down to one single thing, it's this; focus your energies on cultivating SKILL first, then when you have skill, worry about gear.
 
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As far as the ammo:
I usually only buy ammo in bulk except for hunting ammunition. https://ammoseek.com/ is the
best place (search engine) that I know of for in stock bulk ammo.


And the shooting:
Learn about the specifics of your firearm. That includes the steps to the function and how the
different parts contribute to malfunctions.

Practice, using snap caps, used casings, and dummy rounds, how to clear malfunctions. Conduct
magazine change drills and dry fire draws.

Dry fire the hell out of your weapon. Modern weapons don't tend to have issues with dry firing.
Consult your owner's manual for details though.

Go to the range and practice in stages. Practice grouping your weapon at the range you zero at.
Then zero the weapon and confirm the zero.

Practice multiple target engagement. Then practice live fire target engagement with magazine
changes.

When you are comfortable try practicing what we call reflexive fire. This includes engaging
targets to the left and right, and focus on transitioning your body to the appropriate direction.

Practice moving and shooting.

Start with dry fire, then move to live fire only after you can comfortably and safely succeed on
dry fire.

Practice starting in different positions such as sitting down, being behind a barricade, and reacting
to situations where you are trying to defend yourself, such as in your car (dry fire only) and in your
house (dry fire only).




---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Remember, expertise does not come from special training. It comes from the basics. Practice the
basics until they are second nature.

But, I'd recommend you to sign up and take at least a basic pistol class at a local training facility
as a refresher. Always good to sharpen skills that become a bit dull. It might be a bit pricey, but
it's well worth it. Then practice, practice and practice some more.

"Owning a piano does not make one a pianist any more than owning a handgun makes one
a good shooter
." - Jeff Cooper, founder of Gunsite

It's always been nice having his world class training facility right in my backyard:

https://www.gunsite.com/



Plenty to be learned just from their YT videos:
https://www.youtube.com/c/1Gunsite/videos


I don't know this dude as I'm not a reg around here but as someone who once competed and travelled around for shoots, can 100% confirm everything he says here indicates he's the real deal and knows what he's talking about... except I'm so-so on Jeff Cooper .
 
Have been a gun owner since i became old enough to buy a pistol.
Had my ccl in my previous state but have barely target shot in the last 20 years.
I finally feel like it's time to dive back in and get recerted for my ccl. Ammo- for my Sig P229- is back to about 40 c a round so I'm likely going buy 1000 and start it all back up.
Looking for shooting tips, best places to buy ammo, etc and otherwise foster a discussion about safe gun shooting and the hobby.
This is in Mayberry so no political BS

@Deorum @TR0UBLE SH00TER
There's a lot of good youtube videos that will help you out
 
For real sherbro, something people rarely ever talk about is the crazy amount of lead pollution at shooting ranges.

If you want to start practicing and you're spending more time at the range, this is going to sound silly but for your own sake it would be better to wear a mask in addition to ear protection so that you can reduce the amount of particles you're breathing in.

Indoor ranges are by far the worst for this, but there can still be high lead levels in the dust that gets kicked up / airborne at an outdoor range.

If using an indoor range, long sleaves would also be best and one should shower and throw everything into the laundry as soon as you're home.

Loaded with lead: How gun ranges poison workers and shooters (seattletimes.com)
Yeah any hunting in California has to be done with non lead ammo. They passed that a few years back. Even when I bought pellets at Bass Pro earlier this year, the woman behind the counter said you have to buy non lead if you're hunting.

https://cdfgnews.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/lead-free-hunting-takes-effect-statewide-july-1/
 
For real sherbro, something people rarely ever talk about is the crazy amount of lead pollution at shooting ranges.

If you want to start practicing and you're spending more time at the range, this is going to sound silly but for your own sake it would be better to wear a mask in addition to ear protection so that you can reduce the amount of particles you're breathing in.

Indoor ranges are by far the worst for this, but there can still be high lead levels in the dust that gets kicked up / airborne at an outdoor range.

If using an indoor range, long sleaves would also be best and one should shower and throw everything into the laundry as soon as you're home.

Loaded with lead: How gun ranges poison workers and shooters (seattletimes.com)

The indoor range at the high school I attended and the one at the Sportsman's club I belong to both have systems that blow outside air behind the shooting stations and remove air from the target area and blow it through filters to the outside of the building.
 
Buy precision air rifle then shoot thousands of rounds at quarter sized targets from at least 10m.
 
Buy precision air rifle then shoot thousands of rounds at quarter sized targets from at least 10m.

Not to derail the thread, but apparently air-rifles have gotten, like, pants-shittingly good over the past decade or so.
When I checked out of the game in the mid 00s, there weren't many options. It was mostly Wal Mart type offerings with a few high end European "well made, low power" options. The "Drozd Bumblebee" was the coolest innovation in that world at the time.
Fast forward to today, there are, like, numerous full auto BB guns for cheap prices that are just a riot to shoot, high powered PCP air rifles you can hunt deer with, suppressed air rifles with ridiculous power, FULL AUTO 30 CALIBER AIR RIFLES ffs... That world has evolved exponentially.

I picked up one of these in .30...
https://utahairguns.com/aea-challenger-bullpup/
... and its like, dead ass quiet as a well suppressed rimfire and delivering about that power level downrange.
 
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