If a 22 is out of the question another alternative might be a bb gun. On seven acres you shouldn't have a problem shooting on your property or in a basement with proper precautions..
https://www.amazon.com/GLOCK-Blowbac...07NDC65TB?th=1
Agree with everyone else who said gun safety is priority one.
Good luck
Don’t just sit there – do something short sighted and stupid!
Originally Posted by frozentundra
This is one of the highest quality posts I have seen on this forum. I think that Paul Gomez created some of the easiest to digest information for new shooters that has ever been available on the internet, even today.
Priorities
-Home Storage Safety
-Weapon Handling Safety
-Specific Dryfire Safety Plan and Set up
Home Storage:
Assuming you're in the US, any harbor freight has a simple hinge safe that will give you a place to keep your Glock where others can't access it. https://www.harborfreight.com/digita...afe-62985.html This safe will allow you to fit a holstered handgun with no fuss, and it fits underneath your average bed. I would recommend not keeping the firearm loaded at first.
Weapon Handling Safety:
You need to know how to ensure your firearm is unloaded. Remove the magazine, then lock the slide to the rear. While it can be possible to do in reverse order, it is better to not do so until you have a firm grasp on the firing sequence or mechanical operation of the gun.
You need to know the basic rules of firearms safety.
-Treat firearms as if they're loaded.
-Keep the firearm pointed in a safe direction. Do not point at something you don't want to shoot.
-Finger off the trigger (out of the trigger guard. See the finger register position mentioned above)
-Know your target and what is beyond it.
It's important to understand the spirit of those basic rules, and understand how they work with training. Obviously you don't want to shoot your dryfire target. But if you know you're violating that rule, it becomes all the more important to recognize it and ensure that you're following as many of the rules as you can, and have robust mechanisms in place to prevent a unintended shot being fired.
Specific dryfire safety plan:
There are many actions which can be trained in dryfire with an airsoft gun, or a blue inert training gun. Either option will allow you to train for your draw, grip, sight picture, sight alignment, where your eyes point, where your eyes focus, transition from target to target, ready positions, moving, and reholstering. Those tasks alone can be combined in more ways than is fathomable. Some blue guns or airsoftguns may also allow you to practice reloading the firearm or malfunction clearance. This is a staggering amount of skill which can be gained without ever using your actual firearm. I strongly encourage you to do as much dryfire as possible without the firearm. Nearly all of the things I just listed do not require you to pull a trigger, and in many cases pulling a trigger will actually take away from what you're working to improve.
Somethings require dryfire with a firearm to learn. The biggest of these is trigger pull. Pulling a trigger without disturbing or misaligning the sights can only be learned by pulling the trigger a lot. It is important that when using a live firearm to learn this you have a safety plan in place.
Here are some things to consider about dryfire with a live gun:
-Dryfire should only occur in 1 room. (For me it's the garage). Absolutely never in the room I store my firearms, or the room I store my ammo.
-Ammunition is not in the dryfire room, other than my loaded carry gun when performing other activities. (dude, it's a garage. I do stuff in the there)
-As much dryfire as can be performed without a live firearm should be.
-Unload the firearm before going into the dryfire area. I leave the ammunition in an easy to see place when I leave the garage. Why? Because that's where I load and unload. I make a habit to only do that in one place in the house, so that I'm not dicking with a gun all over the house. It feels wrong if I'm loading in another place, and makes you wonder if you need to be handling the gun right now. Handling, loading, unloading when you don't need to is how you fuck up and shoot something when you shouldn't have been screwing with it in the first place.
-Prior to starting dryfire it's a good idea to check the firearm no less than 5 times. 3 times in the dryfire room after unloading the gun in the other room. Then set up dryfire targets, and check the gun 2 more times. Then say out loud "I'm going to dryfire." If you unload the gun, then set the targets you never have a loaded gun and targets at the same time. That's one less potential mistake.
-When I'm done dry firing I take everything down prior to leaving the room and loading the gun. Once again, it prevents having a loaded gun and a target at the same time.
-When reloading the gun say "Dryfire is over, Dryfire is over, Dryfire is over. This gun is loaded." It sounds stupid as hell. But saying it outload is a mental task that really makes you be present in the moment as you do it. And that's what you want. Loading, unloading, and administrative gun handling shouldn't be careless.
When you get comfortable with guns, you'll come up with your own ways to make sure you're safe. You'll get comfortable with the gun, and the habits will be what keep you out of trouble. Nobody is perfect, and I don't always follow all the best practices either. But I should, and I try to. My garage has concrete exterior walls that provide me with slightly more safety in my dryfire. Others dryfire in their basement so that if the day comes when they mess up they aren't sending a round into the neighbor's house. If I make a mistake, what will be the cost should be considered when you pick where you will dryfire and what direction.
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You can't be certain you have a proper grip without live recoil, and you won't learn to shot call without shooting. That's knowing where your hit will be based on what you see and what you felt as you shot the gun. Learning to shot call is amazingly hard for me personally, I can't always do it. It simply can't be learned without seeing what the sights do when the gun fires. Your draw time will probably be slower. Your trigger pull can't be checked to see if it's correct without shooting.
You need to shoot, regardless of the challenges involved to know you're practicing dry fire correctly. WHEN (not if) you find that your live fire doesn't match up with your dryfire you need to get help. You need a trainer or a coach. As soon as folks here find out where you are located, the recommendations of where to turn will show up. Go get a training mentor.
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You can learn a ton from dryfire. As well as free online resources. The information available is absolutely staggering. For books on the subject I recommend "Breakthrough Marksmanship" by Ben Stoeger. For podcasts look to Ballistic Radio with John Johnston as a great place to start. For blogs, I would look no further than pistol-training.com and the articles by our founder the late Todd Louis Green. For videos, I recommend Paul Gomez videos, Shivworks or Craig Douglas videos, Rob Leatham videos, Mike Seeklander videos, and some Ben Stoeger videos. You may find Bob Vogel videos helpful as well. For forums, man, you found it. This is the best place on the web for no bullshit learning about shooting. Make sure you read anything by Gabe White.
Welcome to the forum, I hope you stick around. Ask the questions. If it's been heard or asked a thousand times on this forum, that's cool with me. Because as a collective we might have learned something new since the last time there was someone who actually was new and wanted to learn.
Last edited by Cory; 01-27-2024 at 06:54 PM.
I suggest buying a Pink Rhino laser catridge and downloading the Dryfire Par Time Tracker app onto your phone. You can train with your own pistol instead of a BB gun or airsoft pistol.
Also buy a Barrelblok from Amazon so you can rack the slide without it locking open.
You can also buy a cheap laser boresight cartridge, which is constant "on" as opposed to momentary "on" when the firing pin strikes it, and teaming the boresight cartridge with a dryfire mag, if you don't want to rack the slide everytime.
Looks like I can post freely now. If anyone does notice my response from a couple days back that just appeared in the middle of the thread after a moderation gap, you can ignore those questions as they were answered by posts from NETim, cory, frozentundra, and others that came between me submitting my post and moderation. Thank you again everyone.
Wow, thank you everyone for the thoughtful and helpful responses. I thought this forum might be too advanced for a newbie and really appreciate the warm welcome.
I have shot our Glock on one occasion about 3 years ago at my mother in law's ranch. That side of the family does a good bit of hunting and gave me some bare bones gun safety instruction, but no marksmanship instruction whatsoever as they only shoot rifles. I was not by any means a natural-- with a 12" target about 5 or 6 yards out I managed to put only 3 of 15 rounds anywhere on it.
As for how the definition of "convenient" and location, here's the part where you will all want to slap me. In my defense before I fess up, I define 'convenient' pretty narrowly because I'd like to be able to practice daily or at least multiple times a week. I tend to be pretty intense and immersive with new hobbies. Okay, I'm running out of ways to avoid the question: I'm in central Texas about 2 hours outside of Austin. The nearest gun range is about 45 minutes drive, so I won't be using it more than once or twice a month at best. And frankly, I've been too intimidated to go to as a know-nothing. The range is closer to ranch land than to any sizeable city so I suspect everyone at it will be life-long shooters and perhaps not very tolerant of a "hobbyist".
Your guidance is firm and consistent about the importance of getting a real instructor. I'm sure Austin has dozens of options and I just need to suck it up and plan a 2 or 3 day trip around an intro course, perhaps one with an instructor who can do video follow up sessions.
If I haven't annoyed you too much by coming in as a Texan saying there are no "convenient" options, I do have a couple of follow up questions that I'd appreciate your thoughts on:
In general, would you consider dry practice better than airgun target practice? Intuitively, it seems like the feedback of whether I actually aimed correctly and managed to pull the trigger without disrupting the shot would be highly valuable. However, I don't want to actively undermine building my real skills if the differences in trigger, recoil, other dynamics are such that the airgun practice would do more harm than good.
Does a red dot sight seem like the best approach for my objectives? I have no iron sight skills or habits to unlearn, and I'm not worried about keeping up with batteries or ability to function without them.
You’re not being realistic about this.
We’re all know-nothings at some point, even those of us who have been doing this for years. For instance, I’m at least 20 years out of date on serious defensive revolver work. I’m about to get back on that horse, and I welcome the chance to be a white belt again.
Experienced shooters won’t be scornful or intolerant, they’ll welcome you to the fold and try to get you on the right track.
Once a week is plenty at first. With your level of experience, a 2-3 day course will almost definitely set you back--developing what Bill Jordan said would be an "...intense desire to take up golf." It will also be a huge waste of everyone’s time, so very few responsible instructors would work with you on that basis. In fact anyone who agrees to that is suspect by definition.
You should take a solid introductory course. It will cover the basics that you’re trying to develop through other means, but you’ll develop them a lot faster with a coach. You also won’t be the guy who perfected unsound/unsafe technique then has to unlearn it in a very public setting.
Okie John
“The reliability of the 30-06 on most of the world’s non-dangerous game is so well established as to be beyond intelligent dispute.” Finn Aagaard
"Don't fuck with it" seems to prevent the vast majority of reported issues." BehindBlueI's
Hi Okie John, appreciate the strong opinion here. I'm not sure how to interpret your recommendation, though. When you say a 2-3 day course would set me back and that I should take a solid introductory course I'm not clear on whether this means: a) 2-3 days is too short and I should take a longer more immersive course; or b) 2-3 days is too long for intro and that I should take a 1 day or 1/2 day intro course that is followed up with a coach who can work with me on the range on a weekly basis; or c) something else?
I'm not Okie, but I have been a firearms instructor for just shy of 30 years, so I'll take a swing. I would URGE you to take one-on-one instruction, or a VERY basic group class. As a guy who teaches the latter for the NRA, I will tell you I think you'll get a lot LESS out of that than biting the bullet and paying for one-on-one.
I think what Okie is saying is not to go to a higher-level weekend class where the presumption is that you've already mastered most of the basics of safe gun handling and marksmanship.
Last edited by psalms144.1; 01-29-2024 at 08:15 PM.
@paul-mf,
I would agree with psalms and Okie John...what they are saying is that your typical 2-3 day courses usually assume that you are arriving with a basic skill level. It will be like trying to drink from a fire hose, and you will be 1)struggling to keep up and 2) slowing the rest of the class.
You say that you are 2 hours outside Austin. That covers a lot of real estate. I'm ~ 3 hours from Austin, depending on traffic, and I'm in Corpus. So which cardinal direction you are from Austin might kinda matter, as that will determine how far you actually are from a given trainer/facility. Most of the folks who will actually be helpful to you won't be put off that you are green to gun handling, and those that will be are not the sort that you will want to learn from, anyway. I believe that there are a number of good places in Austin and San Antonio, and I'm sure other places. Others here will be more familiar with them than I will. There are number of Texans on P-F, and you might be close to one or more of us.
"It's surprising how often you start wondering just how featureless a desert some people's inner landscapes must be."
-Maple Syrup Actual
Here's an example of a good introductory course: https://www.insightstraining.com/vie...asp?courseID=4 It's ONE full day on the range and in and classroom, and it teaches you to safely handle and fire a pistol. It's designed for people in your shoes. FULL TRANSPARENCY NOTICE: I know the folks who own and run this school. I also know most of the instructors, I've worked with them in the military and civilian worlds, and I've trained with them.
A typical multi-day course is more like this: https://www.insightstraining.com/vie...p?courseID=146 When I took this course, we put 1,000 rounds of full-power pistol ammo downrange in two 10-hour training days over a weekend. A guy at your stage of evolution will be in over his head in 30 minutes, so the Introductory course is a pre-requisite for this.
Even if you could hang with the material, you'll be on the line with 12-15 other people. Each of them will fire 1k rounds in a weekend, so you'll be exposed to 12k-15k rounds of pistol fire on an indoor range. I was an active-duty Special Forces soldier for 6 1/2 years, and I can promise you that being around that much ammo being fired in that short a period of time will ring your chimes if you're not used to it. GDH teaches the technical skills that you need to become a genuine fucking menace to anyone who disturbs your peace should you decide that's what needs to happen. It begins the shift from shooting a pistol to fighting with it, so you'll learn the draw stroke, limited movement, some low-light work, etc. Even if your training stops at this level, you'll be a far more dangerous adversary than 99% of the gun owners in the US and many folks in law enforcement.
https://www.insightstraining.com/vie...asp?courseID=8 is much more about fighting with a pistol than shooting it. This is where science becomes art, so it's the one you want to repeat every couple of years for the rest of your life. If you think of it in terms of learning a foreign language, this is where English falls away and you become a different person because you now think in the new language instead of just speaking it.
The shooting is the easy part IF you have a solid foundation going in, and the fastest way to get that foundation is to take classes like these. You can't really teach yourself this stuff.
Okie John
Last edited by okie john; 01-29-2024 at 11:29 PM.
“The reliability of the 30-06 on most of the world’s non-dangerous game is so well established as to be beyond intelligent dispute.” Finn Aagaard
"Don't fuck with it" seems to prevent the vast majority of reported issues." BehindBlueI's
I think you can definitely help yourself w/ a BB gun clone of your actual pistol. You will need to research how the gun operates to make sure it works exactly like your gun. Look here;
https://www.pyramydair.com/air-guns/pistols/co2-guns
In my case we shoot Beretta 92s. A CO2 pellet gun had some funky circular plastic magazine that fit into the center of the gun and held 6-8 pellets. Completely unrealistic. A CO2 BB gun is fantastic. The CO2 canister and 18 BBs fit in a magazine like piece that slides into the grip just like a real 92. The mag as well as the entire loaded gun weighs within a few ounces of the real 92. No you can't learn to deal w/ recoil, but every other move from handling and loading, to drawing to the first shot is identical to the real gun so I find it VERY helpful. I especially like that I get a medium moving box, put a small inside of it, tape a paper plate on the side and can shoot as many BBS as I want in the basement.
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