oscarturner
01-23-2012, 09:40
Mas, Your writing has been a huge help to me, and several other guys at my church. In the past few months as we prepared to get our CC licenses, we have had our 6th edition Combat Hand-gunnery at our sides most of the days.
We finished our class for the CCP this weekend and I'm already feeling overwhelmed with how much training an average civilian like myself will require to become "prepared" for a worst case scenario.
For instance, our first shooting exercise was 10 shots at a paper plate from 7 yards while the range master called out times and number of shots to be fired in how many seconds. I used a snub nose revolver that I purchased as my edc cc gun and have practiced with extensively at greater distances. I was dismayed when I realized, of my first cylinder, only 1 shot (my first one) hit the plate. After the reload the next five all went in the plate, but what an eye opener that was! If my first shots out of my weapon are that haphazard just from the stress of a stopwatch and a few spectators, I can't imagine what I could hit under the stress of a life and death situation.
For the rest of the test, I switched to my G17. Admittedly it was to partially blame my poor shooting on the revolver, but I also have a high comfort level with the G17, so I was hoping that would transfer to a calming effect. And it did. I shot quite well after that.
I came away from the experience with a few realizations.
Firstly, the license to carry doesn't make me (or anyone else) prepared. It makes me armed. If I want to even approach being 'prepared' to protect my family or myself, which is why I want to carry in the first place, I will need to join IDPA, or something similar, to get some actual relevant training.
Second is that, after reading countless blogs, magazines and books, I still don't know which gun I should carry. This is because, no matter how much I read, nobody else knows what gun I should carry. I had decided on the snub nose .357 as the 'safe' edc choice based on most of what I read and its comfort in concealment. But even though I have shot snubs a lot, I still have a mental picture of shooting "at" something with a snub where as, with other guns, and my G17 in particular, I am "shooting" something. At this point, addressing Comfortable vs. Comforting, I'm just going to get used to carrying the bigger G17 until I get more proficient with the snub, or, I see a G26 in my near future.
So far I have, 'Not getting enough training.' and 'Not being proficient with carry gun' as two mistakes I'm, hopefully, already avoiding by carrying my Glock and joining our local IDPA. What are some other common mistakes you see civilians like me make when deciding to CC? I'd particularly like to learn any of the fatal ones on someone else's dime.
We finished our class for the CCP this weekend and I'm already feeling overwhelmed with how much training an average civilian like myself will require to become "prepared" for a worst case scenario.
For instance, our first shooting exercise was 10 shots at a paper plate from 7 yards while the range master called out times and number of shots to be fired in how many seconds. I used a snub nose revolver that I purchased as my edc cc gun and have practiced with extensively at greater distances. I was dismayed when I realized, of my first cylinder, only 1 shot (my first one) hit the plate. After the reload the next five all went in the plate, but what an eye opener that was! If my first shots out of my weapon are that haphazard just from the stress of a stopwatch and a few spectators, I can't imagine what I could hit under the stress of a life and death situation.
For the rest of the test, I switched to my G17. Admittedly it was to partially blame my poor shooting on the revolver, but I also have a high comfort level with the G17, so I was hoping that would transfer to a calming effect. And it did. I shot quite well after that.
I came away from the experience with a few realizations.
Firstly, the license to carry doesn't make me (or anyone else) prepared. It makes me armed. If I want to even approach being 'prepared' to protect my family or myself, which is why I want to carry in the first place, I will need to join IDPA, or something similar, to get some actual relevant training.
Second is that, after reading countless blogs, magazines and books, I still don't know which gun I should carry. This is because, no matter how much I read, nobody else knows what gun I should carry. I had decided on the snub nose .357 as the 'safe' edc choice based on most of what I read and its comfort in concealment. But even though I have shot snubs a lot, I still have a mental picture of shooting "at" something with a snub where as, with other guns, and my G17 in particular, I am "shooting" something. At this point, addressing Comfortable vs. Comforting, I'm just going to get used to carrying the bigger G17 until I get more proficient with the snub, or, I see a G26 in my near future.
So far I have, 'Not getting enough training.' and 'Not being proficient with carry gun' as two mistakes I'm, hopefully, already avoiding by carrying my Glock and joining our local IDPA. What are some other common mistakes you see civilians like me make when deciding to CC? I'd particularly like to learn any of the fatal ones on someone else's dime.