Shoot Better!

The science of ballistics is not as simple as many would make it seem.  What a bullet does in flight can vary due to factors you would never think possible.  Modern ballistics calculators, available as hand held units in the several hundreds of dollars, have been around for some time.  With the advent of smart phones, you no longer need a separate hand held calculator (unless you’re in a situation where you need the physical toughness of the unit itself).
The problem is, all of the name brand phone calculators were developed for the Apple Iphone, which means if you are running the Android operating system from Google, you can’t use them.  Run a search in the Android Marketplace for “ballistics calculators” and you’ll find some free apps and some paid apps.  I decided to download several of them and see what the differences are, and if they actually work.
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When I was a young tadpole growing up on Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers westerns, when the guy in the white hat shot the guy in the black hat the bad guy would wince and fold slowly – that is unless the good guy decided to be magnanimous and just shoot the gun out of his hand. Later westerns and cop shows got a lot grittier and you saw a lot of blood and people being blown over backwards. Blown over backward has become the modern movie standard in most cases now, and third party tales on the internet about as to the impact power and “stopping power” of the various combat handguns with varying loads.

Well, it turned out that whatever those early movies lacked in good examples of gun handling they had the right when it came to the actual effect of a handgun bullet hitting a human subject. The truth of the matter, friends, is that bullets don’t blow up people nor do they physically knock them over backwards. Not to say that people cannot react violently at times to being shot, but this depends on exactly what is hit inside the body, and the mental and physical state of the subject being shot. Small animals may react dramatically to this impact but things that weigh 100 lbs or more often do not show any immediate reaction – other than to keep fighting or run faster.

Now this is not another article on 9mm vs .45. It is not about “stopping power” per se, but we all need to accept that the illusions we see on the silver screen are just that – illusions and for entertainment purposes. If you expect your .44 Magnum to bowl people over with a hit to the midsection you may be in for a rude and fatal shock!

So, would I say that caliber or “power” do not matter at all? I cannot bring myself to say that. I see a difference in cases that come across the desk and in the hunting fields, but that difference is subtle, not so drastic that you can say unequivocally that caliber A is so much better than caliber B that if you carry A you cannot go wrong or that B is a silly choice… within reasonable parameters.

Welcome back the to the “pro tip” column for GunsAmerica Magazine from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU). This is our fourth article for GunsAmerica and if you haven’t been following the previous columns from the USAMU you should take a look. There is a lot of good information in them.

My name is SFC Jason Parker and I shoot on the US Army Marksmanship Unit International Rifle team. We are currently in the middle of a very busy competitive shooting season and our team has done very well. So far in 2010 our team has combined to win 6 International World Cup Medals and captured 2 National Championship titles. We have seven shooters that will be competing at the World Shooting Championship in Munich later this summer. In case you are interested in our results you can follow all of the USAMU’s highlights on Facebook.

This month’s article is about some general shooting tips to help improve your marksmanship skills. No matter what kind of weapon you will be shooting, whether it’s a rifle, pistol, or shotgun, there is one way to improve. Practice. I once had a coach that told me that the best way to get to Carnegie Hall was to practice. I have applied these simple words of wisdom to many aspects of my life and they have always proven to be true. Even if you are already a good shot, practicing more often will improve your shot accuracy, guaranteed.

There is only one type of shooting competition that only has a trophy for second place. The trophy is generally made of granite, has an epitaph inscribed on it, and when it is awarded to you, you are surrounded by everyone you love, crying their eyes out because you are dead. It’s called a tombstone.

A gunfight is a competition, but it isn’t a standard shooting competition like those you see in timed shooting sports. Speed is a factor, but it isn’t the only factor. And there will always be factors outside of your control, such as the physical and mental state of the threatening party, his competence, how well we shoot under the pressure of a gunfight, and what we are doing while engaging our adversary to keep from getting shot (or cut, or bludgeoned, etc.).

Some things, however, you can control, or at least prepare to control, and many of these involve speed and can be practiced. They are how fast you are able to present your weapon, how fast you can fire it accurately, and how fast you can reload when you are out of bullets or in danger of soon being out of bullets.

Wyatt Earp, one of the most famous gunfighters of all time, is quoted as saying: “Take your time…but be quick about it! He is also quoted as saying something to the effect of “Fast is fine but accuracy is final”. The interplay between these two factors, speed and accuracy, is one reality we must always recognize, the faster you go the less accurate you are.

There are few techniques associated with the Action Shooting sports that are as impressive as the speed draw. Executed properly it can be done in under a second all the while firing an extremely accurate shot. I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you some of my tips and strategies to make your own draw, a speed draw.

First and foremost, before you attempt to practice your draw, make absolute certain that your firearm is unloaded. Anytime you participate in dry fire training verify that there is no ammunition in your area. Even with an unloaded pistol, always practice safe muzzle awareness. I’d like to begin by breaking the draw down into 3 separate positions. Position 1 is with your firing hand gripping the pistol while it’s still in the holster. It’s important to use 2 points of contact between your hand and the pistol, to ensure you get a good firing grip. The first point of contact should be the web of your hand (the area between your thumb and pointer finger) as high on the rear of the pistol frame as possible. The second point of contact is the top of your middle finger underneath the trigger guard. In addition, your support hand should move in unison with your firing hand to a position just in front of your stomach area, awaiting the pistol to be drawn.

Every sniper candidate in sniper school begins training without a rifle in his hand. If the most elite marksman start this way, how much more so someone who doesn’t have the time and finances to practice shooting day after day.

Whether the extent of your long or even medium range scope assisted shooting will bring you to the fall season of the whitetail, to a field of competition, or to the battlegrounds of Iraq or Afghanistan, your abilities as an elite marksman will start in the same place. They will start with breathing, heartbeat, trigger control and how you handle your rifle. Save yourself some money on match grade ammo and some embarrassing 3″ groups at the range with your competition rifle and try a few things at home to get you started.

Last month in Part I of this series you may have been shocked to find that I didn’t instruct you to go out and buy my “pet” favorite carry pistol. I have one of course, but I have changed what I carry over the years as my preferences changed. The point was that there are a lot of factors, but the most measurable “correct” answer is to measure what you are shooting well, and weigh those choices against the standard “bigger is better” considerations when choosing a handgun for carry. No, I’m not going to tell you what to buy this month either, but we will get into some interesting details about aspects that many people just gloss over, but that are vitally important and will affect your ability to survive your gunfight.

Choices have consequences. People have died for the inability to stay in the fight until they prevailed. Just recently I had a student report that he won his second fight, immediately following his first, because of a technique we taught him for reloading in combat. An enemy fighter suddenly materialized after the first fight was over, presumably out of “nowhere.” He was able to choose the best option, and simply shot said bad guy, because his head, and his gun, were still in the fight! He did not “unload to reload”. He did not stick his muzzle into the air where it might take a lifetime to re-index or block his vision (or act as a flag to tell every bad guy in the vicinity that someone is going to be out of action for a brief period). Rather, he had kept up his guard up when his first attacker fell and, after a threat scan to insure there wasn’t another immediate threat, he started to execute a reload. When a threat did materialize without warning he was able to stop mid-stream and change gears. I could not, of course, be more pleased.

Within the same week we received a report (in the form of an excellent but sad magazine article) from a young Marine who is disabled for life because he did not know how to do this. That of course was not pleasing. Forward this article to your friends! Nobody wants to learn these lessons the hard way, whether carrying a gun as a CCW, as a Police Officer on duty or off, as a security guard, or in the sandbox so far away protecting our freedom.

Hello and welcome to our first attempt at a “pro tip” column for GunsAmerica Magazine from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU). If you haven’t been following the previous columns on the history and purpose of the USAMU, as well as a great article from the custom shop last month on Cartridge Overall Length, I suggest you check them out.
A few quarters in between your pad and the gun will allow you to test the proper pitch so that the gun is recoiling straight back into your shoulder. This is an example of adjusting pitch in the top of the stock with quarters.

My name is SSG Ryan Hadden and I shoot on the US Army Marksmanship Unit Shotgun team. As I write this I have just returned from China where I won a bronze medal for US in Men’s Trap. This is the second shotgun event in the International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF) World Cup Championship for 2010, and my teammates SSG Josh Richmond and CPL Jeffrey Holguin won gold and bronze respectively in Men’s Doubles Trap for the first event in March that took place in Acapulco. We shoot under the governing body of USA Shooting when we compete, but we are all United States Army Marksmanship Unit Soldiers. Medal winners in the ISSF World Cup earn slots for their home countries, and this is the first year that counts. So far the USAMU Shotgun team is coming out Army Strong.

That is a question I get a lot. Sometimes it is from folks who have little or no shooting experience and sometimes it is from folks who just want me to tell them that the latest weapon they have chosen wasn’t a really stupid choice.

Friends, I don’t have an ambiguous bone in my body but I cannot give you an answer without more input. Even then I don’t usually make specific make and model recommendations for I cannot know the totality of your circumstances or, without spending at least a day on the range with you, your skill level. It is truly a case of the Biblical admonition to “work out your own salvation”. All I can do is report on what you might expect to find, but you will have to go shoot the guns and do more study on your own in order to make an informed decision.