Wife shooting a pistol.

ShadeTree

Handloader
Mar 6, 2017
3,515
3,019
She expressed an interest in learning to shoot, so yesterday after canning another batch of pickles during the day we went to the range.

I went over the basics with her a couple of times of how the gun operates and showed her a couple of hand holds, and had her practice dry firing and figuring out which hold was more comfortable for her.

Started her out at 5 yds and told her it's a lot more difficult than what it looks. I have to say for everything being completely foreign to her, I was impressed by her ability to group shots together. The 9mm High Point I have has a 3.5" barrel. Very easy if you stab the trigger or flinch to go completely off target even at short range. Especially for a complete novice.

Just had her shooting at 8"x11" office paper.

1st target, 9 shots. Three of them in a half moon group inside the 2" dot. All of them would've been in the chest area of a man target. 1 possible marginal hit.




Next target was 8 shots. Again 3 in the dot, the rest would've been chest hits. 1st time shooting a semi-pistol of any kind. Guess I shouldn't of told her it's a lot harder than it looks. :? :lol:

 
Looks as if she's getting the hang of it. Fine shooting for many long-time shooters. For a novice, very good indeed.
 
Very nice and it appears as if she is taking to it very well. If you think she might be rushing the trigger or anticipating the shot you might think of doing this. I find it helpful and I like to do it to myself every now and then. I have some of the plastic dummy rounds and I load the magazine with a dummy, maybe a live round, then a dummy, then maybe two live rounds, etc. just mix it up. It really helps to keep a person from anticipating the shot and the noise and recoil. In addition, she learns to squeeze the trigger again if it doesn't go bang or in the case of most striker fired pistols, she will learn to automatically clear it by pulling the slide back and chambering another round. I also like to personally put soft plugs under muffs as it helps cut the muzzle blast by quite a bit. I think it helps me at least and for a new shooter taking the noise away takes away quite a bit of the fear and anticipation.

Looks like you have started her off in the right direction for sure. Nice she wants to learn and will down the road be able to better defend herself.
 
ST,

That's great! Your wife is doing very well. Teaching hunter safety, I can tell you on average the girls are better shots than the boys. My wife never shot a gun until she met me and she shoots a rifle out to 800 yards, carries a 9mm and is pretty darn good with it!
Keep doing what your doing. She is listening to your instructions and having fun! Congrats to the both of you.

JD338
 
JD, yeah I learned early on my wife is a heck of shot with a rifle. She used to hunt with me quite a bit and killed a fair number of deer and a couple of decent bucks. Last 10 yrs or so she hasn't hunted as much.

Still a pistol is a whole other ball game. I'd say her biggest asset when it comes to firearms is a natural trigger squeeze. It's not something I usually need to remind her of. She just does it right on her own.
 
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