The biggest myth of point shooting is that sight shooting is slower.
On the contrary! Sight shooting, by a trained and practiced shooter is faster. Tactiturds decry competition because they fear anything that will reveal their low skill levels. It is hard to push yourself as a shooting expert when local sport shooters consistently kick your butt.
Yeah, competition isn’t tactical but your gun doesn’t know that. It only puts bullets where you direct them. If your technique and skill is truly prepared for fast, dynamic shooting against human assailants then you should be skilled in ANY endeavor involving fast, dynamic shooting against human-sized targets.
Of course, in competition, the only thing you can lose is a little pride and is usually done in daylight on a controlled range. That is not reality. But if your allegedly super tactical skills are prepared for a down-and-dirty back alley brawl in near darkness when failure means death, surely you’re not scared of going up against cardboard targets and a score sheet when witnessed by a few, friendly gun owners.
Are you?
The reality is organized shooting programs have proven sighted shooting as faster for the trained shooter most of the time. Point shooting has merit in certain situations and should be a component of every pistolero’s repertoire but it is false to believe that it is the end-all, be-all of any form of shooting.
Back in the 1950’s Jeff Cooper and friends started hosting Leatherslap events. The course of fire was simple. Pair two contestants against torso-sized reactive targets 21 feet away and have them draw and shoot with the fastest hit winning the bout and best two-out-of-three advancing. Technique and equipment was not restricted.
It was widely assumed that point shooting techniques would win the day, including by Cooper himself. In fact, Cooper published Fighting Handguns before these events and advocated point shooting methods. Almost every other participant used some point shooting system. Jack Weaver’s big contribution, after being defeated, was his willingness to use an eye-level, two-handed, aimed shooting stance even though “everyone knows using the sights is just too slow.” It was only after years of consistent success did his fellow competitors start to change.
http://www.weaverstance.com/history.htm
IPSC, USPSA, and IDPA shooters are free to use ANY technique they want. In fact, most courses of fire generally specify the stance as FREESTYLE. Point shooting, along with any other safe technique, is welcome.
If the point shooting techniques of Temkin, Veit, Turnipseed, et. al, were truly superior competition shooters would be flocking to them. If point shooters started owning practical competition I guarantee everyone would start using them.
But point shooters don’t win because they can’t. Not in most situations where speed and accuracy is measured.
Tim Ferrell
Jun 20, 2010 @ 12:30:47
I don’t have a horse in this race, but a question does come to mind. Can you win in competition with minute of body shooting that would win real fight, given superior speed? I thought better accuracy than that was needed for competition wins, but I am not very knowledgable about the competition thing.
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John Buol
Jun 20, 2010 @ 12:43:38
>> Can you win in competition with minute of body shooting that would win real fight, given superior speed?
Yes, there are types of competitive shooting where this is EXACTLY the idea!
See, that’s the great thing about organized shooting. It can take any form you want. Set up a challenge that tests the skills you’re looking for and measure the results. The course of fire, targets and scoring will dictate what type of performance is needed to win.
That is what is especially annoying about those decry competitive shooting. If you don’t like an offered format then create something else that is better.
There are only two types of gun owners who claim there is no value in organized shooting.
Those who have never participated and don’t understand it.
Those who perform poorly and wish to conceal their lack of skill.
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Matthew Temkin
Apr 25, 2013 @ 20:58:40
Why is it point shooting VS. Aimed fire??
Why can’t you learn/master both???
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