Week 367: Three Triggers

Week 367: Three Triggers

Results may be posted until May 10th, 2020.

For this drill, all you need is your pistol, two targets, and a safe direction. This is going be a dry practice drill that almost everyone can participate in regardless of range restrictions.

At bare minimum, verify gun is unloaded, have no live ammo anywhere in the dry practice area, and keep muzzle in a safe direction. But there is more you can do to ensure safety in dry practice. Please also read Robust Dry Practice Safety Principles and Procedure following the drill description.

Things you must be absolutely disciplined about for dry practice to be productive: grip the gun as hard as you do in live fire, pay attention to the sight picture, and call every dry shot. Be ruthless in evaluation of the quality of your sight picture and trigger press.

Designed by: Gabe White, inspired by a Rob Leatham class report
Target: Shooter's choice - you need a bigger target and a smaller target
Range: Shooter's choice
Rounds: 0

We are going to practice pressing the trigger from three different starting positions (of the trigger finger.) This is intended to refine the trigger press from three different starting points that can arise in the course of shooting in a broad range of circumstances.

Shooter's choice of targets and distance. Use one bigger target that approximates COM at whatever distance. Use one smaller target that approximates CNS at whatever distance. A silhouette target can suffice for both.

Procedure

Start with the gun mounted (on sights/on dot) on the bigger target. Press the trigger without excessively disturbing the gun (better pay attention to the sights!) Alternate between the finger start positions of: 1 - in register, 2 - in contact with the trigger but no pressure applied, 3 - in contact with the trigger and with partial pressure applied (held at the pressure wall, or on a DA-type trigger, with the trigger staged partway through.) Repeat many times.

Repeat, using the smaller target.

Don't worry about keeping track of number of repetitions. Instead just note the time you spent doing the drill.

Please report: gun, targets and distance used, how long you did the drill, and anything you noticed.


Training with firearms is an inherently dangerous activity. Be sure to follow all safety protocols when using firearms or practicing these drills. These drills are provided for information purposes only. Use at your own risk.


Robust Dry Practice Safety Principles and Procedure (the closer you follow this, the fewer opportunities you will have to ND)


Principles:

Allow no distractions – focus exclusively on the task at hand

Keep muzzle in a safe direction

Use correct trigger finger discipline

Verify no live ammo in gun, on person, or in the dry practice area

Use dedicated dry practice targets that are put away until you consciously choose to begin dry practice, and taken down when you consciously end dry practice

Use dedicated dry practice magazines and dummy rounds/inert training cartridges that stay in the dry practice area (if you use any magazine or cartridges)


Procedure:

Unload gun in a location other than the dry practice area

Leave live ammo, and magazines with live ammo, completely outside the dry practice area

Enter the dry practice area

Verify gun is unloaded, that any magazines do not contain live ammo, and that any cartridges present are inert/dummy cartridges

Consciously choose to begin dry practice

Put up dry practice targets

Do your dry practice

Take down dry practice targets and put them away

Consciously choose to end dry practice

Exit the dry practice area and do something unrelated for a few minutes

Return gun to location and condition of your choosing

I remember this from Gabe’s class,

Will give it a try this weekend.

My default dry routine. I like to do it as a cold start at a 25yd B8 too.

This one led to a surprising finding about a specific gun.

I did it with my PX4CC and found that when moving the finger from register, it has to pass over the little hump around the takedown catch. That initially pushes the muzzle to the left, but it then snaps right again as the pressure is removed. This (along with relearning proper finger placement for DA shooting) may explain why I often shoot a little to the right with this gun.

To test the hypothesis, I tried the drill again with other guns that I have a lot of trigger time on - a Glock 19, SIG P229, and Ruger LCR. I didn’t see the issue arise with any of the other guns.