Cold Steel's training guns are a pretty good deal.
https://www.coldsteel.com/specialty/trainers/guns/
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Cold Steel's training guns are a pretty good deal.
https://www.coldsteel.com/specialty/trainers/guns/
I ran across this older video by American Handgunner/Roy Huntington last night on shooting snubbies more accurately.
I'm typically not paying much attention to the trigger on my LCR (I know, I know). It measures 8.3 lbs on my digital Lyman, and is pretty smooth after four years ownership and almost 700 rounds. He suggests staging the pull, first with a slow, careful press, and then, right before hammer fall, he switches to being very careful on the trigger. The demo he does is with his 340pd, which he is very familiar with.
Is this the correct way to shoot a revolver? I wonder if part of the skill here is many thousands of repetitions with his snubby, demonstrating good shots, or if this is the "correct" technique in general, and I ought to learn how to do this myself with dry practice. I confess I've never really thought about this.
I appreciate this may not be how I would shoot my LCR in a SD situation at the moment, but for the purposes of this question, I'm at the square range trying to learn how to be smoother on the trigger and more accurate. So taking the time to learn this is part of what I'm doing. I figure if I can get this down, I can speed things up with practice and still be accurate.
Video for reference.
https://youtu.be/u1mTRuzXAuY?si=eRcIBHMWhfqZ1-Ua
Well, first of all, he’s completely wrong about what snub nose DA revolvers were first in production: that is not his Chief Special in the 1950s. The Colt Detective Special came out in the 1920s, and there was the S&W I frame in .32 that came out in the 1890s, so that poor Chief Special is definitely not the one that defined a category.
Yes, the small frame DA revolvers can be shot as accurately as a larger revolver, regardless of barrel length. And yes, people frequently yank DA triggers of all sizes of revolvers (and pistols) and don’t realize that the problem with the accuracy is their trigger manipulation and not the gun.
No, you don’t have to stage the DA trigger to get better accuracy. That is the completely ass-wrong way to shoot one defensively. Smoothly stroking through the trigger pull without moving the sights is the key to accuracy with any gun, SA or DA or partially-loaded striker or whatever.
This is easier to learn on a DA revolver that has a bit more mass than an airweight or air light J or an LCR, but it is certainly something that can be learned on a lightweight frame. Just is more fatiguing in live-fire than with a steel frame gun.
Dry fire is your friend here: Do the same wall drills and other dry fire drills that teach trigger manipulation that you read about for semiauto triggers. These were actually developed for DA revolvers first, and they still work for DA revolvers. Staging the trigger is a target-shooter’s method of shortening the trigger pull to mimic an SA trigger length. I do not recommend it for someone trying to learn a DA revolver as a defensive shooting gun. If someone wants to shoot an SA revolver, then they should just buy one and shoot it. :D
One drill I have used is: pick a spot on a target, wall, sticker stuck to the wall, whatever. With your unloaded/cleared/dummy cartridge loaded revolver, practice aiming at the spot and holding the gun motionless. Then practice smoothly rolling through the DA trigger without moving the sights. Sight alignment stays the same through the trigger pull = accurate shots. Do that over and over again until it happens by developed habit. If you develop this habit instead of the stage the trigger habit, you will be much better off whenever you actually try to shoot your revolver at something.
Others may have more sophisticated dry fire drills to share, but the key is just rolling through the trigger as if it was one motion while holding the sights on the target with no gun motion.
ETA: more mass in the revolver also helps it to “hang on the target” better/more easily, so that is another argument for a steel frame, especially in a larger gun, when learning/practicing trigger manipulations that will then transfer to the lighter/smaller gun.
Duelist is correct. Roy is kinda wrong.
I pulled out an LCR to see what it feels like. It's possible to stage an LCR, but the straight through pull through is what you need to learn. @RJ Dry fire your LCR slowly, and you can feel what Roy was talking about. There is a point where you "could" slow down you trigger pull and stage, but instead, you should be realizing that your revolver is about to fire and just pull straight through. You really need a K-Frame. ;)
I figured, I mean why go to that length on a training dummy, but it just looked so real I had to ask.
You figure they used one of those laser doo-dads that measures every nook and cranny of a real one and set that as the pattern? It's spot-on.
My favorite setup for around the house in sweatpants.
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