Sample chapter from the upcoming book, Fundamentals of Rifle and Pistol Marksmanship for Hunting and Self-Defense
by Colorado Pete
“Good shooting is good execution of the fundamentals. Great shooting is great execution of the fundamentals.”
I heard the coach of the Colorado state junior highpower rifle team say that at a highpower rifle bullseye clinic. Fundamentals are not some basic things you breeze by on your way to something more exciting. Rather, they are the foundation of everything you do when taking every shot. No matter what kind of shooting you do, if your fundamentals are incomplete or poorly performed, your shooting will suffer.
Whether beginning shooter or experienced competitor, you will find plenty of useful information here, since much that will be covered has not made it out into the general shooting population. Let me also state that this book is not about tactics, nor concealed carry, nor close- quarters battle techniques, nor various shooting sports, etc. This book is about marksmanship: how to hit with consistent accuracy, and to do so quickly. It is also not about going from say, expert level to master level – though it might help some. It is about making sure that your foundational skills are complete and correct, giving you a solid platform from which to pursue further progress.
The pistol, conceptually, is a low-powered, short-range, reactive, self-defense arm intended to be worn on the person at all times, leaving the hands free, in general anticipation that something bad might unexpectedly and suddenly happen. The rifle is primarily an offensive arm allowing devastating power to be delivered, with range and precision limited only by the power of the cartridge and skill of the user. With this in mind, the purpose of this book is to teach the fundamental skills of rifle and pistol shooting to those who have not been formally trained in or otherwise exposed to the techniques described herein. These techniques are basic to all types of rifle and pistol shooting, but I apply them here with certain types of shooting in mind.
For the rifle section, the skills and techniques covered are designed for the hunter of large or small game with either centerfire or rimfire rifle, accentuating the use of field positions and taking into consideration the pressure of time, out to reasonable distances (about 300 yards). I will also touch upon ballistics and trajectory, sighting devices, the effects of wind, selection of the proper bullet, and practical accuracy requirements so that a well-rounded understanding of the intended task may be acquired, and errors in practical application avoided.
The pistol section leans towards the use of a full-sized, powerful pistol in close-range self- defense scenarios, accentuating a balance of speed and accuracy, gunhandling, and mindset.
While the shooting technique of the pistol in defense underwent revolutionary changes in the latter half of the twentieth century thanks to the efforts of a select group of people led by Col. Jeff Cooper, the use of the rifle in the game field by the average hunter seems to have moved rather in a backwards direction. Certain techniques have been long forgotten, ignored, or have never made it into general knowledge, especially with the present tendency of so many rifle shooters to either never leave the shooting bench, or to depend entirely on bipods or shooting sticks when they do. It is my intent to bring both the newer techniques of pistol shooting and the full blend of old and new rifle techniques together in one reference work for the aspiring rifle or pistol shottist so that these will be less likely to fall through the cracks of time as they have in the past.
The skills and techniques covered here will be useful for almost any other type of shooting, however, because they heavily emphasize the basic fundamentals of grip, sight alignment, sight picture, trigger control, loop sling, and position. This is not a specialized tome on either target shooting competition or the use of the rifle in battle, though it borrows heavily from the former’s principles of precision shooting and may provide some useful insights for the latter purpose. These techniques have been gleaned from years of experience in both smallbore and highpower rifle bullseye competition, IPSC/USPSA practical rifle and pistol shooting competition, formal training in both hunting rifle and defensive pistol usage by Col. Jeff Cooper, much discussion with fellow competitors and students, and a select bit of reading. For rifle, they are the classic fundamentals of rifle marksmanship long recognized by position target shooters and the Marine Corps as being what works. For pistol, they are what Col. Cooper taught me combined with what I have learned from other competitors in IPSC/USPSA and students of other trainers. I realize that there is more than one way to skin a cat, and some readers may have come up through a different system, but it has been my observation that all the good systems I have yet seen share the same basic fundamentals and the differences are mainly in the small details. If you have come up through an incorrect or incomplete system, or no system at all, and have an incorrect or incomplete understanding of fundamentals, then this book is for you.
I make no claim to having invented anything presented in this book; that credit belongs to the competitors and trainers who have striven and sweated and questioned over many decades. However, I may have my own slant when explaining certain aspects of the content. One of those slants is an inherent conservatism and caution which readers of the opposite tendency may find amusing. All I can say is, we are all victims of our experience, and I have had just enough to make me lean that way. Your mileage may vary. The target and the clock are always the final judges.
While there is no substitute for being trained by a proper coach, my goal here is to present this material in sufficiently clear, complete, and ordered form so that the reader can not only understand and perform these techniques, but also gain a good practice regimen to be able to improve and judge these skills, and be able to self-diagnose any problems that might arise. I want you to learn to handle your firearm safely, efficiently, quickly, and smoothly, and be able to place consistently accurate shots on your target, near or far, with the maximum amount of speed possible for your existing skill level – and to be able to continuously improve. Most importantly, I want to help you get your thinking about firearms and shooting oriented in the correct way. Whether for the use of the rifle for quick and accurate field shooting, or the use of the pistol for quick and accurate defensive shooting, having the correct mindset and knowledge in your head will both prevent major mistakes and help you perform at your best.
Firearm User Network 
John Veit
Apr 11, 2012 @ 09:51:14
Free Google books
http://books.google.com/books/about/Small_arms_firing_manual_1913.html?id=-cgNAAAAYAAJ
http://books.google.com/books/about/Small_arms_instructors_manual.html?id=z99EAAAAIAAJ
……….
The following have been approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
The US Army’s: Combat Training With Pistols M9 And M11 – FM 3-23.35 – (6/2003)
Chapter 1. Sections 1. thru 4. (Description and Components – Maintenance – Operation and Function – Performance Problems), and
Chapter 2. Section 1. (Basic Pistol Marksmanship).
link = http://www.pointshooting.com/freearmy.pdf
……….
The US Marine Corps Pistol Marksmanship Manual (11/2003) –
Chapter 1. (The M9 Service Pistol), Chapter 2. (Weapons Handling), and
Chapter 3. (Fundamentals of Pistol Marksmanship).
link – http://www.pointshooting.com/freemar.pdf
……….
Chapter 7 of: Advanced Rifle Marksmanship M16A1, M16A2/3, M16A4, and M4 Carbine (April 2003)
link – http://www.pointshooting.com.rifle7.pdf
Note: This is a link to a brief on an alternative shooting method that allows for effective close quarters shooting with or without the use of the sights. It and does not require meeting the “must be met” requirements of traditional marksmanship for effective shooting.
http://www.pointshooting.com/1abrief.htm
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bill price in VA
Apr 11, 2012 @ 10:25:14
Pete, I’m waiting for that book with ‘bated breath. What you wrote here tells me how I’m going to enjoy the rest of your book. I’ve probably read about a million words on shooting, and so far maybe 10,000 of them have been useful and productive. My practice sessions have now gone back to the very basics, and
that helps more than anything else.
Stay well–write faster!
-bp
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Colorado Pete
Apr 11, 2012 @ 13:50:38
Mr. Veit, I’ve seen some of what the Army teaches as pistol training, and they appear to be hopelessly behind the curve. The pistol is not important to military warfighting doctrine unless you are in a highly specialized unit. Even the Army Special Forces do not teach their Green Berets modern technique to high level (I know a bunch of them and have shot with a few).
Although, you will be glad to know that I finally broke down and decided to include a section on point shooting in one of the chapters, largely due to your insistence on the matter (I do think it has importance, but is secondary to having excellence in sighted fire).
Mr. Veit, you are barking up the wrong tree with your idea that sighted fire doesn’t work because most cops don’t use it well, or at all, in real situations. The real problem is that most police departments have a low intensity of initial training, a low intensity of regular practice requirements, and a low bar for qualification. This means the training is not ingrained. This results in either poor performance of the trained technique, or no performance at all – they default to instinctive behavior, which is also performed poorly.
The issue is not that one technique works, and one doesn’t. Rather it is lack of enough intense training to make trained competent sighted fire be the default trained, reflexive reaction in a real situation. It takes A LOT of regular frequent training to accomplish this, which many if not most departments avoid due to such administrative matters as budget constraints.
Such highly trained reflexive reaction can be used both fast and accurately even without seeing the sights, even when the physical motion of bringing the gun to eye level is performed, because the hands are trained to aim the pistol accurately already by themselves, and the sight use is simply instantaneous verification of same – NOT as a time-consuming conscious optical aiming process, but rather by the “flash sight picture” method that takes one or two hundredths of a second to perform. You don’t painstakingly aim the gun by eye like a bullseye shooter, you instantaneously aim the gun with your HANDS – POINT SHOOTING, VERIFIED BY INSTANTANEOUS CHECK OF SIGHT PICTURE!
This is the technique developed by Jeff Cooper, and as you can see it is a blend of both techniques. At HIGH LEVELS of training it is just as fast as point-shooting (like a highly trained martial artist can throw a long-motion head kick faster than a lesser-trained man can throw a short-motion arm block, even accounting for reaction time). Plus it has the advantage of visual aim verification, plus the advantage of trained hand point alignment so at close range a hit will be fairly certain even if the gun is seen peripherally against the target below eyesight line without a sight picture, plus the advantage of being ingrained through INTENSE TRAINING, plus the advantage of working both near or far, without differences in technique having to be learned, or requiring a decision to be made as to which one to use.
Having said all that, I think it is both possible and worthwhile to use your highly-trained sighted-fire-hand-alignment skills (which were learned by using the sights to train your hands where to put the gun) to learn to hit at short ranges with the gun progressively further down from your eyesight level (going from your known skill point a short distance into the unknown), and see what you can accomplish with accuracy/distance.
So the whole “this vs. that” argument is a waste of time. Proper sighted fire is a blend of point shooting learned by, and verified by, flash sight picture, and the skills learned there can be put to use learning point shooting without verification, if one so desires. It is worthwhile to learn both, and be able to seamlessly transition between them by subconscious reflex requiring no more time than simply seeing a new target at a different distance.
I believe sighted fire is the more important of the two, since it works fast up close and accurately at a distance, covering ALL necessary aspects of shooting.
It is TRAINING LEVEL, not technique, that makes the most difference.
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John M. Buol Jr.
Apr 11, 2012 @ 13:55:33
Thanks for posting these.
Government-produced manuals are public domain, made at tax payer expense, and we should know what shooters, military or otherwise, are actually doing as opposed to retelling Hollywood myths.
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John M. Buol Jr.
Apr 11, 2012 @ 14:06:22
>> The real problem is that most police departments have a low intensity of initial training, a low intensity of regular practice requirements, and a low bar for qualification. This means the training is not ingrained.
Most military and police “training” is really just exposure and/or basic familiarization of ideas.
It’s sort of like barbell training for strength development. You can watch someone perform a barbell back squat and try it with an empty bar and claim to “know how” to do it. But unless you can handle a bar loaded to at least 1.5 times your body weight with good form you really haven’t learned it and can’t reap the benefits.
Same with shooting. Police and military are exposed to shooting ideas but really haven’t learned it. “Knowing how” requires demonstrating at a higher level.
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Colorado Pete
Apr 11, 2012 @ 14:37:47
Bill Price, regarding fundementals, the quote at the top of my introduction says it all….
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John Veit
Apr 16, 2012 @ 11:00:16
Sorry for the delay in responding.
……….
……….
“Mr. Veit, I’ve seen some of what the Army teaches as pistol training, and they appear to be hopelessly behind the curve. The pistol is not important to military warfighting doctrine unless you are in a highly specialized unit. Even the Army Special Forces do not teach their Green Berets modern technique to high level (I know a bunch of them and have shot with a few).”
……….
— I agree with your position, as having visited Mexico in the past, and seeing their Police carrying slung carbines, the thought crossed my mind that being in a confrontation with them, would not be good.
— I also suggest you inform the NRA, the FBI, the Cops, and the millions of gun owners that have a pistol at home for self defense that they are hopelessly behind the curve.
— Telling millions of gun owners that their pistol just doesn’t cut it in terms of importance to “war fighting” which I consider includes war-shooting at CQ, as well as shooting in self defense at CQ, is not my idea of a good idea.
— On a positive note, the consequences of rocking the boat today, aren’t nearly as serious as in the days of old.
— In 1633, Galileo Galilei was forced to his knees in front of his betters, and under the threat of torture and death, he renounced all belief in the Copernican theory which held that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
— His sentence was life under house arrest.
— In 1600, when Gioedano Bruno dared suggest that the sun and planets were just one of many similar systems, that space was boundless, and that there might be other worlds inhabited by beings equal or possible superior to ourselves, he became a persona non grata.
— Gioedano was tried by the Inquisition, condemned, and burned at the stake on February 17,1600; and his works were banned by the Church in 1603.
— For more on why going against the establishment can have very serious consequences, go here: http://www.pointshooting.com/1abruno
……….
“Although, you will be glad to know that I finally broke down and decided to include a section on point shooting in one of the chapters, largely due to your insistence on the matter (I do think it has importance, but is secondary to having excellence in sighted fire).”
……….
— If you know of videos or pics of Sight Shooting or FSP, ever being used effectively in a real CQ life threat self defense situation, or of any verifiable study that supports their use in CQ shootings, please provide them and link/s to them.
— I have a web page that has been awaiting such inputs for years now, but it is has been and still is empty. Here’s a link: http://www.pointshooting.com/1april.htm
— Point Shooting methods (QK, P&S, Applegate, CAR), are effective at CQB distances.
— Per the FBI states, if you are going to be shot and or killed, it will happen at less than 20 feet.
— And since Sight Shooting is a proven and documented failure at CQ self defense distances, how should one train for shooting at 21 feet or less, where there is the greatest chance of their being shot and/or killed.
— This is a link to my just updated article, with pics, on how you will shoot in a real CQB situation. http://www.pointshooting.com/1adetroit.htm
— The thought that sighted fire can be used in real situations as you claim in your remarks below, doesn’t mesh with the fact that most Police Officers were and/or are trained in Sight Shooting, and yet more than 50 Police Officers have been killed, and thousands of Police Officers have been wounded, each and every year for the past 22 years.
To me that means there is something seriously amiss with the methods being taught and/or those who do the teaching, or both. Yet nothing is being done about it, except continuing to train in the samo samo, year in and year out.
— In Afghanistan, 1,700+ US troops have been killed in in ten years, and thousands have been injured. And billions and billions of dollars have been spent on that war.
— To me there’s a real war going on in the United States, yet those in charge of policies and practices, don’t seem to care enough to do anything about it.
……….
“Mr. Veit, you are barking up the wrong tree with your idea that sighted fire doesn’t work because most cops don’t use it well, or at all, in real situations. The real problem is that most police departments have a low intensity of initial training, a low intensity of regular practice requirements, and a low bar for qualification. This means the training is not ingrained. This results in either poor performance of the trained technique, or no performance at all – they default to instinctive behavior, which is also performed poorly.”
“The issue is not that one technique works, and one doesn’t. Rather it is lack of enough intense training to make trained competent sighted fire be the default trained, reflexive reaction in a real situation. It takes A LOT of regular frequent training to accomplish this, which many if not most departments avoid due to such administrative matters as budget constraints. ”
“Such highly trained reflexive reaction can be used both fast and accurately even without seeing the sights, even when the physical motion of bringing the gun to eye level is performed, because the hands are trained to aim the pistol accurately already by themselves, and the sight use is simply instantaneous verification of same – NOT as a time-consuming conscious optical aiming process, but rather by the “flash sight picture” method that takes one or two hundredths of a second to perform. You don’t painstakingly aim the gun by eye like a bullseye shooter, you instantaneously aim the gun with your HANDS – POINT SHOOTING, VERIFIED BY INSTANTANEOUS CHECK OF SIGHT PICTURE!”
……….
— Woo Hoo, looks like it’s way past time to take away the guns from the millions of non shootists, and those who don’t, won’t, or can’t practice like a Seal.
— As an effective alternate, I suggest that they be trained in Point Shooting as it works, can be learned with little training, and maintained with little practice.
— Further, in an e-mail that just came out of the blue, the sender makes the point that Sight Shooting does not carry over, or degrade to Point Shooting. Actually, the more extensive one’s training is in Sight Shooting, the worse they will do in a situation where Point Shooting is called for.
— The study title is a mouthful: What Causes Specificity of Practice in a Manual Aiming Movement: Vision Dominance or Transformation Errors?
— Here’s a link to the study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11495827
— Here’s another link to the same study: http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-007-1031-z
— This is from the abstract: “Withdrawing visual feedback after practice of a manual aiming task results in a severe decrease in aiming accuracy. This decrease in accuracy is such that participants are often less accurate than controls who are beginning practice of the task without visual feedback. These results have been interpreted as evidence that motor learning is specific to the sources of afferent information optimizing performance, because it could be processed at the exclusion of other sources of afferent information.”
— A lot of big words are used in the study.
— On a much simpler basis, I know from real world experience that Sight Shooting can not be used when shooting at small aerial targets (pop cans), with an airsoft pistol. And you can easily prove that to yourself.
— On the other hand, using P&S to shoot at and hit those small fast moving aerial targets at CQ is not difficult, but it requires some practice.
— Further, in a real CQ life or death encounter, adrenaline will be dumped into your system, and it relax the muscle in your eye that allows you to focus on things close up or farther away. That will enhance your ability to focus on the threat, but your near focus on close up objects like gun sights will be lost.
……….
“This is the technique developed by Jeff Cooper, and as you can see it is a blend of both techniques. At HIGH LEVELS of training it is just as fast as point-shooting (like a highly trained martial artist can throw a long-motion head kick faster than a lesser-trained man can throw a short-motion arm block, even accounting for reaction time). Plus it has the advantage of visual aim verification, plus the advantage of trained hand point alignment so at close range a hit will be fairly certain even if the gun is seen peripherally against the target below eyesight line without a sight picture, plus the advantage of being ingrained through INTENSE TRAINING, plus the advantage of working both near or far, without differences in technique having to be learned, or requiring a decision to be made as to which one to use.”
……….
— Jeff Cooper was nice person as far as I know. As I understand the situation, he was a gun trainer who was aboard ship in the Pacific in WW II. He never did any time in the trenches shooting with a pistol.
— He without doubt, was a qualified success as a shooting promoter and trainer.
— No disrespect meant to Mr. Cooper. My comment is offered as a means of keeping the conversation on the level. I’m always willing to be corrected, if my info is amiss.
……….
“Having said all that, I think it is both possible and worthwhile to use your highly-trained sighted-fire-hand-alignment skills (which were learned by using the sights to train your hands where to put the gun) to learn to hit at short ranges with the gun progressively further down from your eyesight level (going from your known skill point a short distance into the unknown), and see what you can accomplish with accuracy/distance.”
……….
— Note the comments above about the study which provides scientific evidence that what you say is not true.
— If wishes were fishes, everyone would be fat and happy, so there would no need for guns.
— But, until we get to that “promised” land, why not have the NRA, the FBI, the Cops, and the US Military, get together and find out what does or doesn’t work in real CQB situations where one is most likely to be shot/or killed, and then let the rest of us in on that.
……….
“So the whole “this vs. that” argument is a waste of time. Proper sighted fire is a blend of point shooting learned by, and verified by, flash sight picture, and the skills learned there can be put to use learning point shooting without verification, if one so desires. It is worthwhile to learn both, and be able to seamlessly transition between them by subconscious reflex requiring no more time than simply seeing a new target at a different distance.”
“I believe sighted fire is the more important of the two, since it works fast up close and accurately at a distance, covering ALL necessary aspects of shooting.”
……….
— The rub is that – IT – is never used in CQB situations where there is the greatest chance of your being shot and/or killed. As mentioned above, if you’ve got evidence to the contrary, in the form of pics and/or videos of Sight shooting being used effectively in CQB situations, please present it.
……….
“It is TRAINING LEVEL, not technique, that makes the most difference.”
……….
— As said above, rather than take the guns away from those who haven’t achieved and/or don’t maintain some undefined shooting performance level, training in Point Shooting at CQ should come first as it works, and it can be learned and maintained with limited training and practice.
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Colorado Pete
Apr 16, 2012 @ 13:19:13
Wow indeed.
I never told millions of folks their pistol couldn’t cut it in CQB. Those are your words, not mine. I said “The pistol is not important to military warfighting doctrine unless you are in a highly specialized unit.” Meaning, the military considers it an afterthought, compared to everything else they do. Please read my posts carefully, and don’t put words in my mouth. Personally I think pistol SKILL is very important to personal self-defense – along with other considerations as well.
Jeff Cooper was a Marine detachment officer on board the USS Pennsylvania performing those duties, including a little time ashore where he shot one Japanese with his duty 1911. His training time came after his service post-Korean war (where he shot another fellow with his pistol). He put in more “pistol in the trenches” time in worldwide training environments than you and I can imagine, even before he founded Gunsite and spent about 17 years bringing the world to himself.
One does not have to train to a level of Navy Seal to learn reflexive sighted fire, but it does take work. AND – there is no reason why someone who takes their skill level seriously to NOT train as hard as possible to get as good as possible. WHY NOT train like a Navy Seal, if you think your life depends upon it?
Cooper kept a file of self-defense shooting incidents reported back to him by his students. He was quite satisfied that THEY were performing correctly. I do not know the exact number, but he implied it was over a hundred, IIRC. Sighted fire has worked for many in real life. Your problem (and it is YOUR problem alone) is that they did not have a cameraman filming their performance. The lack of film evidence alone does not constitute “proof” that sighted fire does not work. You might want to revisit the principles of logic on that conclusion. Gunfights usually do not have arranged camera coverage ahead of time, so the number of filmed events will be an incredibly small percentage. Basing a general broad conclusion on that small percentage is illogical. Plus, I think if you tried hard enough, you’d find some film of sighted fire working. I seem to recall seeing some ages ago myself, but can no longer remember what it was.
As far as cops not using their sight training properly while on video, I believe I already provided the reason for that, which you conveniently ignored.
Considering this excerpt from me, and your rebuttal:
Me:
“Having said all that, I think it is both possible and worthwhile to use your highly-trained sighted-fire-hand-alignment skills (which were learned by using the sights to train your hands where to put the gun) to learn to hit at short ranges with the gun progressively further down from your eyesight level (going from your known skill point a short distance into the unknown), and see what you can accomplish with accuracy/distance.”
……….
You:
”
– Note the comments above about the study which provides scientific evidence that what you say is not true. ” ”
Note yourself Mr. Veit, that my comment is based upon my having learned to do exactly that in that fashion, which I can perform on demand. Therefore, I believe that study is in error, since my own scientific experience and proven, scientifically demonstrated ability contradicts their findings.
It is obvious to me that you are unreachable through reason, and have happily decided to ignore all shooting history that happened before your own discovery of point shooting, so I will quit spending time on you and wish you a good day sir.
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John Veit
Apr 16, 2012 @ 20:07:36
Thanks Pete for your response,
Back in 54 when shooting my grease gun from the hip in Quals in Germany, a WW II Sgt told me that when shooting from the hip I should use my index finger along the side of the gun to aim it, and pull the trigger with my middle finger.
I already had qualified as an expert with the M1, so I was not happy to hear that, as my thinking at that time was “why would any one want to do that?”
Well, I did what I was told me to do, and when I shot at the target, wood chips flew off of the slim supporting board that ran up the middle-back of the target. And that confirmed to me that using the index finger for aiming works!
And anyone can prove it to themself using common sense, safe gun handling, and a gun that is appropriate for shooting that way. That excludes the 1911.
Better yet, use an airsoft pistol in your garage, if that’s legal, and plink at some pop cans tossed in the air. When you find that you can regularly hit those fast moving 2 1/2 inch by 5 inch targets and without that much practice, think of how hard/or/easy it would be to shoot at some big human sized and slower moving target at CQ distances.
Sight Shooting has been taught for over 100 years now, so coming up with some pics and/or vids of it being used effectively in at least a couple of CQB situations, should be a no brainer.
Here again is the link to my article on how you will shoot in a real CQB situation along with pics of Officers shooting and killing perps and none of them appear to be using Sight Shooting.
http://www.pointshooting.com/adetro.htm
Here’s a link to pics of Ruby shooting Oswald. Ruby used P&S which worked for me back in 54, worked for Ruby, and still does now-a-days on small and fast moving aerial targets.
http://www.google.com/search?q=ruby+shoot+oswald&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=xcyMT4KpJ8a6iwK3wcDTCA&ved=0CDYQsAQ&biw=1165&bih=609
Thanks again for your response.
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