Can I build basic pistol skills from nothing with an airgun and online resources?

[paul-mf]

Hi All, I'm a rank newbie with firearms and looking to build some level of basic skill with the Glock 19 I picked up for home defense a couple of years ago.

There are no firing ranges or personal instructor options convenient to my area, and my neighbors would definitely complain about noise if I trained using a real pistol.

I'm planning to start building my skills using a blowback airgun Glock, YouTube videos, and paper targets in my back yard (7 acres). Also, based on the videos I've watched so far, I'm thinking I want to learn on a red dot sight as the easiest way to get some ability to hit mid size targets in the 5 to 25 yard range.

I would welcome any advice about the feasibility of this approach and/or appropriateness of red dot. In particular, if I should get reasonably skilled with the airgun at hitting targets, will this translate to some degree of effectiveness with the real thing? If this is a reasonable approach I would especially appreciate recommendations for books, blogs, or online videos.

Thanks in advance for any advice. And please let me know if there is a more appropriate forum to post this kind of request to.

-Paul in Marble

[Clusterfrack]

Welcome to Pistol-Forum, Paul. What a great question, and one I'm not sure anyone has asked here before.

My main concern with new gun owners is safety: including storage, handling, loading, unloading, holstering, firing, and proper/legal use. I think airsoft or even a Bluegun is a great way to learn and practice, and I have used both when teaching new shooters. Of course some of the things you need to learn require the real gun, and that needs to be done safely so you don't shoot yourself or your family members accidentally.

Then you need to learn how to shoot the gun so you can hit what you are aiming at (and not hit other objects that don't need to be shot).

Doing all that online, and without a coach is challenging, and in my opinion not ideal. If it were me, I would travel to take a class or two. Let's wait for some of our subject matter experts on pistol training to chime in.

[paul-mf]

Hey Clusterfrack, thanks so much for the quick response.

For a little more context, I do have 3 family members with experience in hunting and varmint control on their 120 to 640-acre ranches. By no means are any of them qualified instructors but their gun safety advice to me does align with what I've been reading and watching online. That said, all of them have no experience with pistols, on top of them not being instructors, so I question whether there are differences between pistol and rifle safety that they may have no clue about.

Whenever I do get to a certain base level of competency in my backyard I do plan to drive a few hours to the nearest ranch and see if I can use the real Glock to achieve similar results. I suppose one of my other questions, is, if I train exclusively on blowback air pistols at the beginning, will I pick up bad habits that are hard to undo for a live pistol?

Thanks again,
Paul

[RJ]

Hey Paul. Welcome. I’m glad you’re here. I turn 65 next month, and picked up a gun for the first time 10 years ago, so I can kinda relate.

I have some thoughts for you but need to get to a real keyboard, but will try and put some suggestions for you soon. There are a lot of smart folks here also, with tons more experience than I have. Hopefully they’ll be along shortly.

[shane45]

IIRC there was a guy from a country that had stout firearms prohibition who followed this path and when he came to the states and shot for real did very well.

[HCM]

IIRC there was a guy from a country that had stout firearms prohibition who followed this path and when he came to the states and shot for real did very well.

You're thinking of the Japanese Bianchi cup shooter who mostly train with Airsoft in Japan. But it didn't play out exactly like that. He had good coaching in Japan with airsoft. He also shot 20,000 rounds during a month of live fire training while being coached by Mickey Fowler (4x Bianchi Cup winner) before the match.

There is also a Vietnamese shooter who won an Olympic medal in air pistol primarily training dry fire. But 1) Air gun; 2) was dry training due to lack of budget / ammo; 3) had previously shot before; 4 received professional coaching.

I think you could do a lot with airsoft / airguns or simulators with professional coaching.

You could make some progress on your own with air soft/airguns but true autodidacts are rare.

There are professional instructors who do virtual / remote/ facetime lessons. I think given the OP's stated parameters that would be a good place to start in conjunction with his airguns.

At some some point though, to be effective with a Glock 19, you will need to travel or do what ever is necessary to do some live fire and validate your training. Particularly with regard to grip and recoil control. It's just too easy for one's grip and stance to get sloppy only doing dryfire.

[CCT125US]

Define "convenient" and your general area.

[Cookie Monster]

When I first purchased a firearm, Glock 17. I took a 2 day basics class - 5 hour travel one way. From there I was able to dry practice and watch Paul Gomez You Tube videos to improve and get very proficient as I continued to take classes.

Good luck and welcome to PF.

[MickAK]

It can be done on your own with online resources but it's going to cost much more money and time than if you get professional in person training to start with and video training sessions to maintain your growth.

That's not a small much. There are going to be lots of little things that you are going to miss with online resources only that will take you many hours of training to unlearn. This is in addition to thousands of dollars of ammunition, thousands of dollars of wear on equipment, and a lot of frustration.

This is just to learn basic marksmanship. There's a lot of other things that go into using that tool effectively. If you have to spend an excessive amount of time learning the one thing in leaves less time for the others. And less money, as mentioned. So a trainer and some range trips might be more convenient than you think when taking everything into account.

[Dov]

What country are you in?

If in the US there probably are at least basic hunter safety and probably local CCW instructors nearby.

I think in general hunter safety classes are generally good.

Local CCW instructors can vary from good to fair to bad, and for someone starting out it will be difficult to tell which are which.

I would strongly recommend taking a hunter safety class or two to start with to get the basics of gun safety.

If your in a shall issue state for CCW (meaning a state where anyone with clean criminal record and sometimes basic class roughly akin to getting drivers learning permit can get a carry permit) good chance there are people in your county if not your city/town that teach State approved or accepted CCW classes.

i know in my state here in the Midwest Community Education classes almost always have CCW classes from couple different people.

Here is one resource https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/res...-carry-permit/

For hunter safety just googling your city and hunter safety classes or going to local gun shop and asking should get listings.