Anyone new to shooting is going to realize very quickly shooting handgun accuracy isn’t as easy as it looks. To many, it’s impressive just to hit paper on the first few shots. For some after a few hundred rounds, they are still all over the place. Or worse no matter what they seem to do they can’t hit the bullseye. So how do you improve your handgun accuracy?
To start you must get all the fundamentals down before you have a chance to improve your handgun accuracy. You maybe be able to fudge one or two fundamentals. However, without all of them, it’s hard to get to that next level of accuracy. You need to have the right grip, trigger press, sight alignment, stance, and breath control.
Grip
The proper grip on your gun is important if you want to improve your handgun accuracy. Without a proper grip, anything else do, will be void. The proper grip helps you deal with recoil, and have consistent shot placement.
Semi-Auto
Now to start, every gun requires a slightly different grip due to differences in the grip of the gun itself. Start by placing the backstrap of the gun in the palm of your hand. Then place your index finger straight out along the side of the gun above the trigger. The rest of your fingers will wrap around the grip. Then have your thumb goes straight out on the other side. You’ll want to place the palm of your other hand on the side of the grip that isn’t covered by your fingers. Now wrap fingers over the top of your other fingers. Make sure that your thumbs both point forward just under the slide on a semi-out pistol.
Make sure your hands are as high up on the gun as possible without getting in the way of the slide. If you get them the way of the slide you will end up with what’s called “slide bite”. “Slide Bite” is here the slide catches your hand and rips off a chunk of skin in the process.
Many handguns have a beavertail. This is a curve built into the backstrap of your gun to prevent you from getting a slide bite. You want to make sure your hand is touching the beavertail.
You want your hand up high to absorb recoil. The lower it is on the gun the more recoil you will feel in your wrist.
Revolvers
For revolvers, you can’t get too high up on the grip. You can, however, get your fingers in front of the cylinder. This is bad. There are a lot of hot gases that come out around the front of the cylinder. Hot gases can burn your fingers. Make sure your fingers are wrapped around the grip. With your thumbs crossed in a way that prevents them from being close to the front end of the cylinder.
Trigger Press
One of the most difficult things about handgun accuracy is pressing the trigger. This is due to you pulling on a trigger that takes 3-7 LBS of force to break, attached to a gun that weighs less than 3 LBS.
Physics alone says you are going to have to hold the gun steady or it will move as you press the trigger. This, of course, means you can’t just yank the trigger with your finger and expect the gun to stay where you pointed it.
Press and Squeeze
You can now see why your grip on the gun is very important. However, the trigger press is equally important if not more important. We call it a trigger press because you want to press the trigger straight back. By pressing the trigger straight back towards your palm your hand keeps the gun from moving around. Unlike if you just yanked it moving the gun left or right in the process.
Some people call the trigger press a squeeze because you want to go slow and slowly squeeze the trigger. Done correctly you should be surprised when the trigger breaks and the shot is fired. Granted it’s your gun and after a while, you’ll learn the exact point at which it breaks. Which is why you always press the trigger straight back, not worrying when it will break.
Finger Placement
Unlike a rifle that you want just the tip of your finger touching the trigger. Most handguns you want your finger to contact the trigger around the first knuckle. It really depends on your hand and the gun as to the exact location. You don’t want your finger touching anything else but the trigger. Not to mention you’ll want to press the trigger straight back without moving the rest of the gun.
Sight Picture/ Aiming
The human eyes can see many things at one time, but only really focus on one thing at a time. This is important to understand when you are aiming a gun. Unless you have mounted an optic on your handgun, you are going to have some sort of rear and front sight that needs to be lined up. This means no matter what the sights look like, you will have three things to try and focus on at once.
When aiming for handgun accuracy you want to line up your rear and front sights, then make sure your front sight is lined up with the target. Most handguns will have the sights set up so you place the target right above the front post.
You want your focus on the front sight. When done correctly you’ll see the rear sight, and the target, but both will be out of focus. You want to make sure your front sight is what you are focused on.
Red Dot and Scopes
It’s become very popular to have a pistol with a red dot mounted on it. With a red dot sight, you want to focus on the red dot with the target slightly out of focus. Contrary to the way you aim with a front post sight, you will place the red dot so that it covers your target, as most red dots are 2MOA or bigger. Depending on the size of the target you may cover the whole target with the dot.
With the popularity of rifle caliber pistols, pistols with scopes have become popular. If you are shooting a rifle-caliber pistol with a scope you should treat it like a rifle that you aren’t shouldering. So you will follow that same fundamentals of shooting a rifle standing up.
Stance
There are three main stances used when shooting a pistol. The Isosceles, Weaver, and Chapman. Each one has its pros and its cons. When it comes down to it, you need to find a stance that works for you and then do it consistently.
Isosceles
Isosceles stance is named after the fact that your arms create an isosceles triangle with the gun at the tip. You thought you’d never need geometry in real life. For once your teacher was right.
You’ll start with your feet roughly shoulder-width apart. With your knees slightly bent. Making sure you lean forward a little bit. Grip the gun with both hands, arms out in front of you. Depending on your eye dominance your gun will be slightly off-center of your body to line up better with your dominant eye.
Pros and Cons
- You naturally point the gun
- Easy to move your body towards other targets
- Eye and hand dominance doesn’t really matter
- Maybe less stable than other positions
Weaver
The weaver stance was developed by Jack Weaver in 1959. He was competing in shooting competitions at the time and developed the stance to draw his pistol and shoot quicker than his competitors.
The weaver stance is much like the stance you’d use when shooting a rifle standing up. You want your none dominant foot forward of your dominant foot. Much like a boxing stance. Both of your arms will be slightly bent.
Pros/ Cons
- the grip makes controlling recoil easier
- There is a push-pull grip that is more stable
- Changing position towards other targets is more difficult
- Not as natural as other positions
Chapman
The Chapman stance is also called the modified Weaver Stance. The biggest difference between the two is that your trigger arm is straight with the elbow basically locked. This means you’ll look straight down your arm to get your correct sight picture. This can be a huge problem for cross-eye dominant people.
Breath Control
Breath control is extremely important in rifle accuracy, so much that you can see your sights move as you breath. With a pistol, you won’t notice it. However, it’s just as important to handgun accuracy as it is in rifle accuracy. When right before you squeeze the trigger you want to make sure to pause your breathing.
This pause in your breathing should be at the natural point of your exhale right before you inhale. This will give you a constant point in which you body is the same place. Just like with a rifle your whole body moves as you breath. You want to have NPOA with pistol shooting as you would a rifle.
Trigger Reset/ Hold Control
Many people will tell you to always shoot your gun to trigger reset. This is where you squeeze the trigger, then release it just enough to feel the trigger reset before squeezing off the next round. While this works great, it’s not for the reason most people will give you.
The reason people tell you to shoot to trigger reset is because you have already taken up all the pre-travel in your trigger. Which they are right. It speeds up your shooting. The thing is the more important thing is to hold control and not slapping the trigger.
When you shoot to trigger reset, you also pay more attention to holding your trigger back, and the way you release it. You don’t just yank it back then release it right away. Thus avoiding jerking the trigger. Which of course makes you more accurate. So all through shooting to reset does help pistol accuracy. Being careful to hold your trigger back for a second and slowly releasing it fully has the same effect on pistol accuracy.
Conclusion
Pistol accuracy is much like rifle fundamentals. It’s all about the proper grip, stance, trigger squeeze, sight alignment, breath control, and hold control. When you find that you are doing each of those elements correctly and consistently, you’ll find your accuracy will naturally improve.