Wednesday, April 23, 2008

A Thought on Self Improvement

Many of us probably don't get to the range as often as we should. With the price of gas and ammo going up every day, live fire practice is becoming more and more expensive.

Here is a quick and dirty training idea for those of us who carry a firearm on a daily basis.

Daily dry fire drills.

Every day when you get home from work, shopping, church or whatever, do a set of dry fire drills using the concealment and rig that you are wearing.

First, unload your firearm. Pretty basic, but it had to be said. Do whatever routine works for you to ensure that your firearm is not loaded before dry fire drills. Some folks unload their gun in one room and practice in another. I place my magazine in my hand gun safe along with the ejected round. I rack the slide three times after dropping the magazine to eject the live round. If somehow I forgot to drop the magazine, seeing rounds eject the second and third time I rack the slide would alert me to my error. I check the chamber clear before holstering the pistol, and check it clear once again before starting practice.

The drill is pretty simple. With your attire and gear exactly as it was when you were out and about, draw and dry fire ten times. Working movement into this drill makes it even more effective.

A few minutes of concentrated work every day will go a very long way towards improving your ability to protect yourself and the ones you love.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is a great tool that lets you work with your weapon while ensuring that it is unloaded, ammo safe, http://www.ammosafe.com/ammosafe/index.html?Open

We used this in the police academy. It is a piece of plastic that has a stub that meets the dimensions of a round, 9mm, 40, 45 etc. The stub has a plastic stem that extends through the barrel and protrudes from the muzzle.

This lets you and everyone else know that your weapon is unloaded. This allowed us to draw and use our weapons instead of fake weapons in arrest and use of force drills.

John R said...

That is one of those products that make me go "Geeze, why didn't I think of that".