So we're in Tennessee, sunny Tennessee at the Charlie Hafnemann memorial firearms range
and I'm with my good pal Harold Rushton.
Now not only is Harold one of the worlds greatest ever field target shooters.
He's also a highly experienced pistol instructor and he's going to be running me through today
how to use these badboys here.
So Harold tell us a little bit what it is you actually do.
Well what we do here is we teach people from basic pistol, rifle all the way up to highly
experienced stuff.
Firearms people that have been into shooting all their lives.
We can teach you if you've never shot a pistol before.
The proper stance grips, side line, trigger control how to actually function with a pistol.
How to get on target, how to make hits you know really slow really methodical.
Learn how to do it correctly.
And then we can walk you through the steps sow here you get to an intermediate point
and all the way up to expert level.
So we can go from zero all the way up to expert level.
So we can go from zero all the way up to highly advanced and we'll teach people how to go
from nothing no experience whatsoever all the way up to if your really experienced know
what your doing just try and fine tune that.
And my background is in law enforcement tactical operation.
I was a state trooper for many years and so I spent a lot of time in not only learning
these things myself but also other law enforcement officers.
I was a firearms instructor when I worked for the State.
I'm also an NRA firearms instructor aswell.
So we can teach these guys, ladies whatever either way children, youn guys who are just
learning how to shoot.
All the way from zero to expert level.
Cool how about complete morons?
Hey we got you covered man.
Okay good.
Well I've actually shot a pistol a little bit as a kid before they banned it.
They banned pistol shooting now over in the UK so my experience is probably about twenty
years ago now so I'm pretty much starting from the word go.
So if you could go over some of these techniques that would be good.
What we're gonna do now is I'm gonna ask you to remove the pistol from the holster.
Point down range, finger off the trigger and we're gonna go through first of all just kind
of getting your grip together and what I'd like for you to do first is to fire about
five shots into the top bullseye on this target for me.
The way that you would normally shoot a pistol.
We're gonna then evaluate what you've done and se if we can make it better.
Okay, so first thing to do is I want you to charge the pistol.
The pistol already has a laoded magazine in it now what we'd like to do now is change
around into the chamber.
So you got the correct grip and what I'd like for you to do is grab the pistol back here
like this.
Yeah.
Firm grip.
Don't put your fingers on this portion of the chamber.
Put It right back here.
Pull it back and then let it go and slam it home.
Okay I'll put my ear defenders on first.
Okay all right.
Now what I'd like for you to do is give me your position you would normally shoot a pistol
in and just take five very slow very methodical shots at the top bullseye on this target right
here.
Is there a safety?
No safety at all the lock doesn't have an external safety it has internal safety that
are built into the trigger.
So there's nothing to flip up and down move around.
Okay cool, so you squeeze the trigger it disengages the safety automatically .
Okay that's five al right now.
Go ahead and holster the pistol and lets talk about what you done.
Right now looking at your target there what I'm seeing you got several shots below the
bullseye.
Yeah, you got a couple in that's really good.
You seem to be improving a bit as you went along.
And looking at your grip and your stance there's two things that I see immediately we need
to do.
Okay first we need to work on your grip.
What I always like to do with a pistol is get a really high grip on the pistol.
If you don't mind pull the pistol out.
All right I'll take it and show you a clue to get a high grip on the pistol.
Yeah When you were firing I was watching and you had a bit of a gap here and so your not
fully controlling the pistol.
When that happens, so what you want to do is get a good grip in here really high on
the pistol right and then we want to have a bit of a tension through here and then we
got a gap on this side.
So this thumb is straight forward.
Yeah.
We fill in the gap like a piece of the puzzle.
We want this finger to go straight forward aswell.
And also you had your finger up here, this will tend to pull shots downwards sometimes
when we put pressure up there.
So what we wanna do is just come in real firm right here okay.
Both thumbs forward really high grip on the pistol.
An the other thing we wanna do is we wanna get our knees bent just slightly .
We're gonna lean into the target.
Okay.
So when you come out here like this lean into the target.
You lock the elbows out so you've got what's called an isosceles triangle.
Yeah.
It gives you a really solid stance so your knees are slightly bent.
Your arms are locked out.
Your thumbs are forward.
High grip.
Finger on the trigger squeeze, squeeze the shot off.
Okay does that make sense.
Perfect sense good.
Okay well lets try that then.
Okay all right.
Same target lean yourself forward a little bit.
Get your legs spread a little bit wider.
All right
Yeah.
Take your time.
Squeeze the trigger.
Concentrate on the side, concentrate on the front side as much as possible and lineup
between the rear sides.
Good, excellent.
Okay.
Now holster your weapon, now do we see improvement?
Yeah, immeadiate improvement right?
That's like an inch and a half group now.
Absolutely, that is a fantastic group.
So you went from shredding your group out six inches maybe okay which would still be
deadly, you know in a combat situation.
But taking these fundamentals and in one quick short lesson you went forma six inch group
to probably an inch and a half.
Let's go and take a look at this.
Let's take a look.
Seroiusly.
Yeah, Ian what we got here is I was watching your shots as you were taking the first five
shots okay and these were your first shots.
I believe this was your first shot okay, okay.
And then some of these were mixed from here on out so.
This is your first group that you shot.
Using your stance, your trigger control, your grip.
Okay and I identified a couple of things that you were doing that needed to borrect.
Okay and then I asked you to take five more shots after that.
And so then after that you shot this group right here.
I'm gonna say that's excellent.
Oh thank you.
That's a very good group.
Had a great teacher.
What can we say.
But anyway that is a marked improvement in just one quick lesson.
So you know those are the kind of things you can teach people out here when they come out,
basic pistol instruction going from zero to building that basis that we're gonna need
to later on if we want to compete.
If we wanna be efficient in self defense.
You know these are the things we can do to help people.
We went form this to this.
All in the matter of five minutes.
You know that's it.
Tahts incredible.
Tahnk you very much man, really good job.
So what's next?
Well next I think we'll go back, we'll look at maybe a mag change and also talk about
are sights a little more and just kind of go through a couple more basics.
Cool lets do it good.