Survived the Appleseed Pistol Clinic.

Sweet God, I sucked.

Let me start by saying, if there is a pistol Clinic being offered anywhere where you can go, take it!

The Tennessee class was held halfway between Manchester and Tullahoma at a NG range and it is a great “little” location. Although it offered some interesting locations and activities to do (and wish I could do without having to wear green) we were there for pistol.

“Can I borrow one and some ammo for practice? Thank you”

The range. I need one of these for my backyard, but removing the neighbors is way more money than I have.

As we any Appleseed event, you will enjoy the history lessons of the Revolution which are the principles of Appleseed, but this being pistol clinic, you will also be get the story of the Two Sams.

OK, but this is a post about shooting so let’s get started. Appleseed begins with a “diagnosis test” to see where you are in terms of accuracy since that is the most important metric alongside safety. So, you get to shoot this target:

13 shots: 4 on each tombstone and one in Major Pitcairn’s button. You will shoot this target again through the course to show your improvement (or lack of it in my case).

I won’t show you how bad I did but suffice to say initially the tombstones would have survived the encounter. Then it began the chore of identifying what was that I was doing wrong and try to correct it. And this is the key point that Appleseed teaches or at least taught me: You need to determine what ails you in order to heal it or you are just spinning wheels and wasting ammo. You will shoot several different drills using several different targets to see if you need correction, apply it, shoot it again and measure improvement or try to correct more as needed.

And you shoot no matter the weather conditions. Day One was cold but sunny and not even what you consider a gentle breeze, but Day Two was wet, windy and miserable.

Remember this photo for later.

Shooting during bad conditions will teach you how you will perform when things are not in your favor, which most of the time are not in the real world. And since cold is a new subject for me, it was indeed a learning experience and an eye opener.

I won’t go into each specific drill; I will let you take the clinic and enjoy the discovery by yourselves. But what did I learn? What was I doing wrong or not doing better? Remember, this is about accuracy and not Points Down in a match which is my background after shooting IDPA for a decade and a half.

Body wise, I was not locking both elbows for the Isosceles position. Old fart I was I was still doing a half-assed modified Weaver, but this was easy to correct and maintain. I was also limp-wristing just a tad enough to mess with re-acquisition, but not enough to screw with the operation of the pistol. Also, easily corrected and maintained.

A dear old buddy of mine in Facebook made the comment that a lot of shooting “It’s all in the 6” between the ears, man” and he is too right for comfort. Another one of my screw ups was getting frustrated and slapping the shit out of the trigger rather than doing a constant press over and over. But the frustration came about while trying to correct what I consider was my main issue shooting this weekend: A focused front sight.

I wear transition multifocal glasses in everyday life. The shooting glasses in the above photo are also corrective but do not get dark when bright and sunny. I put my regular glasses away and shot day and a half with them.

One of the struggles you have with multifocals, is to find that sweet spot where your front sight is crisp and position your head the same every time. If the position is unnatural or uncomfortable, your shooting will suffer. At lunch the second day, I switched from my shooting glasses to my regular ones and then forgot the switch them back for the rest of the drills and a miracle happened: I found a crisp front sight without difficulty every single time. Then and Dunce Alarm went off in the deep recesses of my brain and reminded me that the shooting glasses were almost three years and two prescriptions old. Loud internal cursing ensued. And no, that is not equipment failure (although I had one bad enough forcing me to go to back up gun) but purely operator fuck-up in those six inches between the ears. My shooting improved, but nothing Hollywood-dramatic, I still need more practice in terms of dry-firing and more ammo sent downrange.

My last “major” correction was shooting during the breathing pause. By the end of the clinic, I was almost doing it automatically, but not quite there yet. It sounds silly but it does make a huge difference in accuracy, and it is an easy trait to develop which you will see in action by the lack of front sight movement.

And now comes the hard part: Did I improve? According to the metrics, yes. The first PQT I barely made 101 while my last one reached 157 points. But the idea is to be good enough to score 210 points of Expert Pistoleer.

I posted in Facebook that shooting is a perishable skill and mine was cremated. Again, that is operator fault and only corrected by the right quality and amount of dry-fire and real fire, which is something I will do.

And once again, do take the clinic without hesitation if offered in your neighborhood (and I include anywhere in your neighboring states.) This clinic should be the standard for all “basic” gun instruction and any other groups or entities involved in teaching pistol should host one of these events quarterly if possible.