by Chris Cerino
Chris working with a student to verify their ability to align sights and make a good sight picture
Next time you’re shooting, take a good look at your target. Are all the holes in the area you wanted or expected them to be, or does your target cause you to question what’s happening? Much of the time people begin to question their gun and their ammunition long before blaming themselves. Usually “It’s the nut behind the grip” causing the accuracy issues. Every so often, my nut gets loose too! Also known as operator error! While teaching, I watch very closely what students are doing and when I see a shooter not getting the hits he or she wants I ask them a couple simple questions.
Where were you aiming? What did you see when the gun went off? To stay within magazine column length guidelines I’ll need to speak to the 70% of the shooting public: righthanded shooters. Just remember that left-handed shooters will experience the exact opposite or mirror image of the problem.
Speaking first about iron-sighted firearms is easiest to understand. Even easier is limiting this yet again to handguns.
Generally, I will see a shooter place shots low and/or low left. How low the hits are depends on the shooters sight picture and/or distance from the target.
Question #1: Where are you aiming? When I shoot any target, I cover it or cut it in half with proper sight alignment.
(If you’re intending to learn something here, have an unloaded gun for dry fire as you read on.) If I’m shooting at a 3-inch dot at 20 feet I almost completely cover it with the sights and fire my shot. This will generally put my hits in the center to top third of the circle. So I ask the shooter with low hits “are you cutting in half or covering the circle?” Shooters are usually adamant that they are covering it. To verify this I take their gun and shoot a shot dead center.
Usually it works out.
Question #2: What do you see when the gun goes off? When your gun goes off you need to be seeing the sights properly placed on the intended target.
What I do to verify this is have the shooter hold the gun and take a sight picture with their finger off the trigger and alongside the frame. I press the trigger while I watch their eyes and feel their body language. A majority of the time, when the round goes off, it goes through the same hole I had previously fired. However, the shooter usually drops the gun quickly to see how they did, but not before the bullet left the barrel. That’s the key.
Another funny saying is: “It’s real hard to see the target and bullet holes with that big ugly gun in the way!” Shooters have a bad habit of wanting to see how they did before the bullet has even left the barrel so we lower the gun to see the shot at the instant we tell our trigger finger to shoot.
The problem with this is that it takes time for the physical action of shooting to happen even though we said, “Now!” in our brain. We see what we want to see, then our nervous system has to respond to the visual stimulus, then the physical trigger squeeze action has to happen and the physics of the firearm have to take place in sequence. All of that occurs after the brain said, “Now!” Add all of this to the fact that each round, for most, is like a birthday present we can’t wait to see. We end up with a major loss of focus from sights to target at the moment we fire the round.
This doesn’t even take into account the low left portion of these low hits.
The low left, for a right-handed shooter, is the shooter adding to their loss of focus by getting everything right, sight alignment and sight picture, then touching the trigger, perfecting the sight alignment just a little more and then—bang! Smack the trigger to capture the moment.
On a handgun with a standard trigger, smacking it hard and fast will usually cause a major deviation of impact. Couple it with loss of focus on the sights, and you get a big fat miss.
How to call the shot
The only way to call a shot, no matter what type of sights or weapon system, is to see the sights when the gun goes off. Properly aligned sights, properly placed on the intended target at the moment the gun goes off. Following those sights into recoil as if your life depends on it will get the hit.
If you do your job, the gun will do its job and you’ll know exactly where the bullets are going if you can do this.
Dry fire practice is completely fine with most modern firearms. Even with some of today’s rimfires. Having a hard focus on the sights at the time the hammer falls will teach you a lot about what you are doing wrong or right.
If I see the sights come out of alignment or the sight picture change, as I squeeze the trigger, I either start over, adjust my grip pressure or my trigger finger placement.
One of these usually helps to keep from disturbing the sights, their alignment and sight picture.
The more you learn about why you miss, the more you’ll understand about what it takes to hit.
Chris Cerino is a nationally known firearms instructor and competitor who’s been training law enforcement officers and military for more than 12 years. He has worked in peacekeeping positions for municipal, county, state and federal agencies spanning more than 20 years. A majority of those years have been spent in tactical and firearms related fields. Literally immersed in pistol training for years, his skills are founded in life experience.
He is the director of training for Chris Cerino Training Group LLC, teaching in a “do as I do” fashion.
Chris is a current peace officer and remains immersed in the firearms industry by teaching, competing and working across the nation. Email: info@cerinotraininggroup.com.
