by Chris Cerino
Chris Cerino is a nationally known firearms instructor who has been training law enforcement officers and military for more than 10 years. He will now be writing a monthly “Training Tips” column for The Gun Mag.com. He has worked in law enforcement positions for municipal, county, state and federal agencies spanning 19 years. A majority of those years have been spent in tactical and firearms related fields. His skills are founded in life experience. Literally immersed in pistol training, finding new ways to get shooters to feel comfortable and perform to strict standards is what made Chris the shooter and instructor that he is today. He is the director of training for Chris Cerino Training Group LLC. Teaching the importance of fundamentals in a “do as I do” fashion is what has caused him to be a respected instructor across the country. Chris remains immersed in the firearms industry by teaching and competing nationwide.
“My gun shoots low!” I hear that all the time. The reality is that it’s generally not the gun, it’s you.
Please remember that I have personally trained and remediated hundreds of shooters including myself, which alone should help to keep some of my comments in perspective. It is imperative to know that I am NOT a naturally talented shooter. Never was, never will be. I would suppose that in the world of adult education I could be appropriately labeled as having Adult Attention Deficit Disorder (AADD). I learn best by doing and by making mistakes. Sort of a trial and error process! For the most part, I ended up in firearms instruction by default. I was the “best of the bad lot” back in my full time police days. I could shoot well and better than most, but I had no idea why. As I progressed through the years and several training classes, including instructor level certifications, I still did not know why I shot well sometimes and badly at other times.
Even after moving on to the prestigious Federal Air Marshal (FAM) service, I still struggled with consistency of shot placement. Good enough to pass with very high scores, I just couldn’t do it consistently.
Thomas Edison himself often had referred to mistakes as “experience,” so I have a lot of experience. There was a high ratio of instructors to shooters at the FAM academy. One instructor knew I was frustrated and stayed with me hour after hour pointing at my front sight as I shot in an attempt to get me to focus on the sights. I understood sight alignment, was pretty good at trigger pull and thought I had the correct sight picture. All that one-on-one instruction and I was putting 60 rounds in about a five inch group back to 25 yards with a double-action/single-action pistol chambered in .357 Sig. The problem was that the group was consistently about 6 inches low. So consistent, that they changed my rear sight for a higher sight. I graduated the FAM academy finally shooting more centered but still unaware of exactly why.
As time passed and I began to under stand the importance of sight alignment, sight picture and follow through I started to hit high on the target. What I found was that I was finally aiming at the center of the target and now hitting six to eight inches high as the distance increased.
Diagnosis? To start, they changed my sight back to the standard rear height. What I came to learn from this situation was that my gun never really shot low. The gun was point-of-aim, point-of-impact, as most combat pistols with fixed sights are at 25 yards. The targets we used in the FAM service were humanoids with about a 14-inch ten-ring in oval shape with a six-inch oval in the center of that which we called the “X-ring.” Of course we all wanted our shots not just in the ten ring but the “X-ring.” Problem is, it’s real hard to see the X-ring with that big ugly gun in the way so I would lower it to make sure I could see the X-ring. Ultimately this ended up being a 6 o’clock hold. Remember too that if you can see what you are shooting at you are probably even lower than a true six o’clock hold. This put me low on the ten ring and even outside it at times.
I should have been cutting in half or covering that x-ring if I wanted to hit it and I should have been focusing on the sights when I was shooting. Not on the target! The lesson learned here was, in order to hit what you are aiming at you need a combination of four important fundamentals of marksmanship; Sight Alignment; Sight Picture; Trigger Management, and Follow Through.
Cover what you want to hit, focus on the sights, press the trigger in such a fashion so as not to disturb your sight alignment or sight picture.
Then maintain your focus on the sights through the break of the round and through recoil until your sights settle back on the target.
Here is a drill you can use to work on these fundamentals. Draw a “plus” (+) sign on a blank target as an aiming point. Start off at about 6 feet (muzzle to target) from the target.
Aim at the intersection of the lines ensuring that the horizontal line is passing through the sights, not on top of level sights. Cover the horizontal line with the sights. Be sure that the vertical line is coming straight out of the top of the front sight. Press the trigger as you should, without disturbing the sights and be sure to follow through by not changing your focus to the hole in the target. The gun should rise and fall in recoil and you should not, at this distance, see the bullet hole. After the recoil impulse and follow through is complete, you can see where the round impacted.
At this distance it should be, if not right at the intersection of the crossing lines, just below the intersection of the crossing lines.
This drill builds mental discipline and shows you exactly what it takes to hit a target. With practice you should be able to perform this drill placing shot after shot into the same hole for any number of rounds. As you become comfortable, you can increase the distance by two or three feet at a time. Your rounds should become more centered as distance increases but do not expect them to be in the same hole every time. If your impacts get lower, you have to stop and ask yourself what you actually saw when the gun went off. If you saw the target or bullet hole form, then you failed to follow through and lowered the gun at the moment of the shot. You probably even said, “Now!” and jerked the trigger causing the shot to be not only low but low and left or right depending on which is your dominant hand.
Remember when you are shooting any gun for sighter groups that you don’t shoot a group. A group will happen by doing the same thing over and over again. Therein lies the hardest part. Getting your mind and body right so that you can perform the fundamentals of marksmanship as near perfectly as possible each time.
