I taught myself to shoot at an early age on my Grandma’s farm. I do not understand how or why, or if it was natural or instinctive. As I look back, I simply cannot imagine how I knew what do to. I did not have a father or older male relative to teach me. The same thing happens when I am engaged in carpentry or similar work today. Often it is better to simply stop thinking and just do it, and it just happens. It is scary to see how this manifests itself as I see the project come together without effort. Perhaps this is why I like carpentry so much as it is an act of building something useful and I do not have to engage my critical thinking much. It simply happens without much mental effort as the hands make it come together. I typically do not need blueprints nor instruction. I just do it. This skill is now already built into my brain. What I am trying to say is that someone processes these kinds of skills naturally and they can be harnessed and improved with mental and physical practice. Unfortunately writing or expressing myself clearly and succinctly was not included in my God-given and genetic makeup.
I was given a Savage Model 24 over-and under-combination .22 LR and .410 shotgun by my mother who had grown up in the Ozarks during the Great Depression on a dirt farm. It was on her farm where I learned to hunt and shoot. I was 10 years old and the gun’s barrel was 24 inches long. At about 8 pounds, this was considered a lightweight gun. The first time I pulled the trigger, I got a pheasant, and the second time, I got a squirrel, both on the same day. I cleaned them, and Grandma cooked them up.
Some Unsafe and Painful Lessons
I learned to snap shoot as a child using a Daisy BB sping-powered gun and learned how to quickly gauge range and trajectory to hit a moving target. In what nowadays would be considered grossly unsafe conditions, we had several “BB gun wars” between groups of kids. More so than paintball, low-powered metal BBs at close range hurt quite painfully and could penetrate soft skin. And yes, they could indeed “put your eye out.” Participants were therefore highly motivated to take cover and learn how to effectively shoot back, in revenge. These early experiences proved to be important later in life.
Fast forward to the future, and my first paintball experience occurred late in life. On a day when I was ill, I was invited to play paintball against a very experienced paintball enthusiast who used to go on organized events over a weekend. Knowing that I would not likely have another opportunity, I jumped on it, despite feeling ill. To start, he placed me on open ground on snow that had turned to part ice and he took the high ground with plenty of tree cover. I was old and fat, and sick and had never before operated a paintball gun. He was much younger, very fit, and very experienced. We played four rounds. We wore all the appropriate modern safety gear, including goggles.
Because I was able to keep a cool-headed and could think clearly, I was able to use my fire to force him to move in way that was advantageous to myself. I used covering fire while I moved toward a point where I expected him to emerge and managed to win half of the time. I always and instinctively used ‘coup de grace‘ headshot when the opponent was already shot and down. When pumped on adrenaline the killer instinct in me takes over and I become ruthless. This is the way it should be if you are in a fight for your life: cold, calculating, and ruthless. If you can not keep cool under pressure, then you’ll be dead. This paintball game was an important life experience. In close-quarters combat, the best I could do was win only half of the time. This is not acceptable performance. And I am now much older and no longer have the cat-like reflexes of my youth, and I am still just as fat.
What is the best firearm for you?
What is the best firearm for you? Is it the one you’ve got, or is it the one you would shoot more often? Or is it the rifle that you can afford to shoot? A scoped version or iron sighted of whatever rifle you will use could be perfectly adequate if you train with it and learn what it (and you) can or can not do. Learn to use what you have and then if possible, upgrade later. When I was much younger, when I first qualified at a range, I could reliably hit an 8″x 10″ target at 200 yards shooting off-hand and standing without a support with iron sights. This was using a horribly inaccurate Ruger Mini-14 using Federal 55-grain soft point ammunition. This was necessary to ‘qualify’ and be certified as a competent shooter. It is a basic requirement for law enforcement that most can perform. Because I did not regularly shoot and had never shot a Ruger Mini-14 prior to qualifying, then it must be relatively easy for most people. However, my assumption could be in error.
For those who did not grow up shooting, meeting a basic requirement to qualify with a rifle may not be so simple. We also had to qualify with a 12 gauge shotgun by shooting trap. Shooting trap or skeet is excellent training for developing the necessary eye and hand coordination to hit a fast-moving target. It is essentially ‘snap’ shooting at close range, and that is the kind of shooting style that best describes combat inside of 100 yards. Most combat will occur inside of 50 yards because most people can not hit a moving human target at more distant ranges with a shotgun.
If I were shooting a shotgun inside of 25 yards, then I would likely hit a fast-moving target even if it is only 4 inches in diameter or the size of a clay pigeon. The problem with shotguns is that they do not penetrate cover well and ammunition management means that providing any suppressive fire is severely limited. Continuity of fire is important therefore a magazine with no less than 15 rounds should be used. However, I only need to wing someone with one round and the fight will be over. Most gunfights will be over within 2 or 3 rounds fired if a shotgun is used. Typical contemporary police gunfights with handguns are “spray and pray” affairs with perhaps a hundred rounds expended and only a few hits made. A long arm is far superior, be it a shotgun or rifle. A man with a rifle who is in a fight with someone armed with a pistol will more than likely win — nearly every \time.
If a shotgun is what you have, then you should have a semiautomatic handgun to back it up. And you should frequently practice reloading your shotgun one shell at a time to keep it topped off, and also with a number of shells quickly when behind cover. I can reload a Remington 870 in my sleep, upside down, in the dark when cold and wet. That is how fluid we need to be with our firearms. If you cannot do that, then the shotgun is of limited use and a handgun must be used with the shotgun as a backup. But do not get into a gunfight armed with just a handgun. For most people, it would be better to use a semi-automatic rifle that has a detachable box magazine and a flash hider.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)