Left a sportsmen’s club meeting two evenings ago and once again I have to marvel at how ignorant I am. In the course of a conversation on handgunning I suggested that a serious gun owner is required to invest in a smaller caliber version of his favorite carry gun, and ideally, a .22 caliber version on the same gun. In my ignorance I suggested that if a shooter was a 90% shooter with his dominant hand but a 10% shooter with his non-dominant, that he was in fact a 10% shooter, being only as good as your worst shooting. I suggested that if any self-defense shooting took any length of time, one is apt to find his shooting hand injured and one’s survival will depend on his one-hand, non-dominant level of skill. I pointed out the recorded incidents in Battle of Stalingrad (the book, not the film) The Drager killing in NH, and the FBI-Miami shootout to name only three. I suggested that great skill comes from challenging training, but faster skill can be had if challenging training is mated with fun practice. I want on, traveling down the dark path of my own wrong headed thinking, by suggesting that heading to the range with a .22 understudy and a small caliber clone would give a shooter the encouragement to train mirror image. That as one’s skill level moved up, one could transition away from the .22 and focus on the smaller, clone caliber pistol and then the usual caliber. In my shame, I shared that ahead of my police qualifications, I regularly put in some range time with a pistol of a larger caliber than the duty weapon, against targets smaller than the duty targets, and at distances greater than the qual., distances. The gentleman’s reaction to my heresy was biblical, and I suspect, if posts and fag sticks were still in fashion, I would be sharing the fate of Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Fortunately realizing how out of my depth I was, I promptly slinked away, just a little wiser. I felt the same red-faced shame I did when once, years ago, I suggested to a local Chief of Police that one could reliably strike a man sized target with a snub revolver from beyond 20 feet. The Chief I was speaking to gave me a look of raw disgust I am sure he reserved only for pederasts he had locked away, turned his back on me, and never looked back. Someday, I hope that if I can’t learn to be less ignorant on these topics, I could at least learn to live in the dark and hide my ignorance from the general shooting population. Absent that, anyone have a lighter?
